Background
I have an MVC3 project to which I added the Twitter.Bootstrap.Less Nuget package.
To my knowledge, all this did was copy the appropriate JavaScript / LESS files into their appropriate directories.
However, when I now run this through my build/deploy process onto my dev server, MSBuild doesn't copy the /Content/less folder to my production server as part of deployment package.
My build server doesn't have an internet connection, so unfortunately using NuGet without committing packages to source control isn't an option.
Question
How do I get MSBuild to deploy these files? Or do I need to copy the files, uninstall the nuget package, and manually copy them back in?
You could setup your own internal NuGet package source. That would be internal to your network and mean the build server could pickup the NuGet packages without an internet connection.
E.g. On the server, copy the packages you need to a folder and setup a package feed to that folder for the build server to use.
See:
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/hosting-your-own-nuget-feeds
Related
Short Question
Is there a way to programmatically download all of the Nuget packages needed to build/publish a solution and output them into a single directory that can be moved to a local Nuget repository?
Some Background
Where I work, most development is done on an air-gapped network (no internet). On a recent project, I was able to develop on our internet-enabled network. This happens to be the first application developed on the internet-enabled network and the first ASP.NET Core app we've ever developed. The solution builds, runs, and publishes just fine on the internet-facing network. I am now trying to move the solution to the air-gapped network, but I am having issues getting all of the dependencies moved over.
At first, the solution wouldn't build because of missing ASP.NET Core nuget packages; so I copied ALL of the nuget packages from the local cache on the machine that I used to develop the application to the local Nuget repository on the air gapped network. Now the application builds, but I can't seem to publish the web project (ASP.NET Core). I'm getting 25+ errors along the lines of:
Unable to find package runtime.any.System.Diagnositics.Tools. No packages exist with this id in source(s)...
Unable to find Nicrosoft.NETCore.App with version (>= 2.1.6)...
Unable to find...
I'm also getting a runtime error "This page cannot be displayed" when I try to run from visual studio (using IIS Express), but I'm not sure if that's a related issue. The unit/integration tests run fine.
I could try manually downloading each nuget package from Nuget.org and moving them over to the air gapped network, but it takes hours to get things moved from one network to another. Is there anyway I can automate the retrieval of all nuget packages required to build/publish a solution so that I can make a single transfer from one network to the other instead moving what I have and waiting to see what breaks? Preferably I'd like a exe or a PowerShell script that could look at a sln file and drop all the necessary nuget packages into a specified directory.
On your internet enabled dev env, you can browse to the root directory of your project and use:
dotnet restore --packages .\package\
This will use the directory called 'packages' as the local cache for the solution and all nuget files will be copied to it.
You can then include the same switch in your build, to ensure that the local cache is used.
dotnet build --packages .\package\
I answered two very similar questions a few weeks ago. Have a look at these answers to see if they help
Command to download a Nuget package with all dependencies to a folder
Is it possible to create a cache of nuget packages for computers without internet?
I have a .Net Standard project in a solution and I want msbuild to build it on our build server. If I do not run "nuget restore" first, I get the error "project.assets.json' not found. Run a NuGet package restore". I already have all of the necessary NuGet packages in the "packages" folder at the solution level. I would like to indicate somehow that msbuild should just use the files in the local "packages" folder instead of trying to re-download the files. How can I do this? Thank you.
.NET Standard projects do not use the packages folder in the solution. This is the "old" way of referencing NuGet packages through packages.config. The new way - PackageReference items in the project - uses a shared global packages folder in the user's home directory. The project.assets.json needs to be regenerated on the build machine with the resolved paths to this shared cache even if no packages need to be downloaded. In fact, a NuGet restore might not even need to hit the network if all packages are already on the machine.
The best solution I have come up with still involves a NuGet restore, but I added the local packages folder as one of the NuGet repositories in nuget.config and now I don't have to reach out to any remote repositories. This is not quite what I wanted, but it is allowing me to progress.
<packageSources>
<add key="local" value=".\packages" />
</packageSources>
I installed both the elmah.mvc and elmah.sqlservercompact (package link) nuget packages. This gets elmah to log to Sql Server Compact.
Problem is it copies a large number of files from the _bin_deployableAssemblies folder, on every build.
How do I change this to deploy/copy only if file has changed, like I can do for other resources?
Seems when I install the SqlServerCe package manually, it doesn't add all those binaries to the build file.
Thought I would try and get the most out of my visualstudio.com trial membership. I created a solution with a few projects, pushed it to the Microsoft git source control provider, configured a build definition and tried to build it on the project server. However it keeps failing telling me:
The type or namespace name 'Moq' could not be found (are you
missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
I know this means that the build server can't find the Moq.dll library. I had installed it using NuGet, but configured my .gitignore to keep the packages folder out of source control. I also enabled NuGet package restore for the solution and pushed nuget.exe, nuget.targets, and nuget.config (all 3 of the files in the .nuget folder) along with all of the other project files.
Now I am sure I could get the build to work if I pushed the packages folder too, but I want to keep the nuget packages folder out of source control. So I am wondering, is this possible? The visualstudio.com docs say that the build servers have visual studio 2013 installed, and because of this I assume that nuget package restore would work to download the missing dll's so that they can be resolved by MSBuild. Is this right? Or to use automated CI builds at visualstudio.com, do you need to have your packages under source control?
According to the log file, nuget package restore downloaded the package. What gives?
Project "C:\a\src\MySln.sln" (1) is building
"C:\a\src\Tests\MySln.ProjA.UnitTests\MySln.ProjA.UnitTests.csproj"
(3) on node 1 (default targets). RestorePackages:
"C:\a\src.nuget\NuGet.exe" install
"C:\a\src\Tests\MySln.ProjA.UnitTests\packages.config" -source ""
-NonInteractive -RequireConsent -solutionDir "C:\a\src\ " Restoring NuGet packages... To prevent NuGet from downloading packages during
build, open the Visual Studio Options dialog, click on the Package
Manager node and uncheck 'Allow NuGet to download missing packages'.
All packages listed in packages.config are already installed.
PrepareForBuild: Creating directory "obj\Debug\".
ResolveAssemblyReferences: Primary reference "Moq". C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\12.0\bin\amd64\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1635,5):
warning MSB3245: Could not resolve this reference. Could not locate
the assembly "Moq". Check to make sure the assembly exists on disk. If
this reference is required by your code, you may get compilation
errors.
[C:\a\src\Tests\MySln.ProjA.UnitTests\MySln.ProjA.UnitTests.csproj]
This line is also in the build log file, below the above:
Considered "..\packages\Moq.4.1.1311.0615\lib\net40\Moq.dll", but it didn't exist.
I had this same error but it was occurring on our build server. I had added Moq via NuGet, checked in the project and everything was fine. I then moved the project into a new folder in TFS and the build server just couldn't seem to find Moq. It was building great locally. I ended up fixing the problem by making sure all of my changes were checked into source control and then deleting my local source code directory. I got latest and my test project realized it needed a new copy of Moq. I blame TFS/ source safe or what ever the Visual Studio integration module is for not adding it to source control at some point in time.
Figured this one out on my own. Turns out I had added the nuget packages before moving the test project into a Tests subfolder. The solution still built on my LM, probably because the dependencies were already copied to bin/Debug. After reinstalling the nuget packages, the solution built on vs.com.
Package is installed on local machines with a reference to packages folder added in project. Now If I publish it on server, it is causing problem as glimpse is not installed on server. Please guide what is the best way to install it on server.
Glimpse just needs its DLL's to be in the bin folder on the server.
Some deployment techniques (like on Azure Websites) leverage NuGet package restore to download dependencies and build your site right on the server. With these techniques you don't have to do anything.
For simpler techniques, like xcopy or FTP of files, just make sure to include the DLL's - they are already being copied to the bin when you build your site.