I am wanting to use Web Deploy to run a custom deployment setup.
As I am wanting to have this work fine when running on many different environments (team members local machines, 4 different builds servers) I want to deploy to a local path that is relative.
What I am wanting to do is:
Deploy to a local relative path
Have the after build step do magical things...
However when i enter the local file path to deploy to as: "..\Deploy_Production"
web deploy complains with this:
2>Connecting to ..\Deploy_Live...
2>Unable to create the Web site '../Deploy_Live'. The URL http://:0 is invalid.
Its as if Web deploy thinks that the relative file path is a website URL. Using "..\" instead doesn't help my cause.
How do you get WebDeploy to deploy to a local relative path?
Edit 1:
I have tried to use a ConvertToAbsolutePath task before build, to no avail:
<PropertyGroup>
<WebPublishMethod>FileSystem</WebPublishMethod>
<SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>http://mywebsite.com</SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish>
<publishUrl>..\Deploy_Production</publishUrl>
<DeleteExistingFiles>False</DeleteExistingFiles>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
<ConvertToAbsolutePath Paths="$(publishUrl)">
<Output TaskParameter="AbsolutePaths" PropertyName="publishUrl" />
</ConvertToAbsolutePath>
</Target>
Edit 2:
The above works, but only when running commandline builds against the Solution file not a project file
We have a bug here, when publishing using File system you have to provide a full path. We actually found this bug earlier this week. It will be fixed in our next update. In this case when the relative path is passed it incorrectly thinks that its an IIS path.
As a workaround you can edit the .pubxml to make the publishUrl a fullpath. Fortunately you can use an MSBuild property so that this works in team scenarios. Here is what you should do, edit your .pubxml file and update the value of publishUrl to be the following.
<publishUrl>$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)..\..\..\Deploy_Production</publishUrl>
This path will be relative to the .pubxml file itself. I've verified that this works from both the command line as well as the publish dialog. If you have any issues with this let me know, but the fix should hopefully be released in a few months [no guarantees of course :) ].
Related
I have a solution composed with different projects from different path. We use foundation projects from a vanilla folder and then project specific projects from specific directory. Example:
specific project directory: c:\proj\specific
vanilla project directory: c:\proj\vanilla
vanilla project x path: c:\proj\vanilla\repo\src\project\x\code\
In each vanilla project we have a publish profile that points to the root directory and includes a publishsettings.targets file that has the actual target where the project should be published. By using this structure we can have a lot of projects and publish them using a single target so we don't need to change that target in all projects.
We discovered now that we have a problem when using these vanilla projects as the path used in publish profile is relative to vanilla directory and actually we need it to be relative to the specific project directory (solution directory).
In our publish profile we have:
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<Import Project="..\..\..\..\..\..\publishsettings.targets" />
<PropertyGroup>
...
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
So we need a way to specify the actual sln directory to this path so we can include the correct target so when we do the publish from visual studio it will publish to the specific project and not vanilla one.
I tried finding a "MSBuildSolutionDirectory" but it only seems to be a "MSBuildProjectDirectory" variable that can be used.
Does anyone knows a way I could get the path
Project="c:\proj\vanilla\publishsettings.targets"
to actually be
Project="c:\proj\specific\publishsettings.targets"
by using some msbuild or custom variable and not hardcoding it?
I need it to work both with vanilla (as I have a vanilla.sln) and also with specific project (as I have a X.sln).
Here is a way to make your own version of the MSBuildSolutionDirectory you were hoping to see built in:
<PropertyGroup>
<SolutionDirectory>$([MSBuild]::GetDirectoryNameOfFileAbove(`$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)`, `YOUR_SOLUTION_NAME.sln`))\</SolutionDirectory>
</PropertyGroup>
Notes on the GetDirectoryNameOfFileAbove MSBuild property function:
From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/04/02/msbuild-property-functions.aspx:
$([MSBuild]::GetDirectoryNameOfFileAbove(directory, filename) Looks
in the designated directory, then progressively in the parent
directories until it finds the file provided or hits the root. Then it
returns the path to that root.
From my own testing:
The returned path does not include a trailing backslash.
If the filename is not found, an empty string is returned.
I have an optional config file in my application that is used for instance-specific configuration. The application works without it, and it is only necessary if you want to configure some additional features. It therefore shouldn't get included in the source control as every developer and client deployment doesn't need it and those who do will have different values.
I have a problem figuring out how to configure this for continuous deployment. I can generate the file on the build server without issues. However, since MsDeploy reads the csproj to determine which files to deploy, this file has to be tracked by my csproj to actually be moved to the deploy server. But if I have it tracked by my csproj, then it becomes no longer optional and I can't build the application without it. I'm using Mercurial which doesn't have a commit-one-version-ignore-subsequent feature (git's --assume-unchanged) so options seem pretty limited on that front. I am a very strong believer that it should be possible to clone a repo and run the project immediately, so I really don't like the idea of comitting something that cannot build.
Is there a way in the csproj file to indicate that a file should be included as content if present and ignored otherwise?
If this is the only .config file in the directory, then you can edit .csproj file manually to reference your file via file mask:
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="*.config"/>
</ItemGroup>
Recent libgit2sharp Nuget uses a new Nuget feature that allows you to include a piece of a build script in your NuGet. The purpose it to copy a native dll to a subfolder of the bin folder, like that:
<ItemGroup>
<None Include="$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)\..\..\lib\net40\NativeBinaries\amd64\git2-e0902fb.dll">
<Link>NativeBinaries\amd64\git2-e0902fb.dll</Link>
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</None>...
Now, it was all nice and beautiful locally, but when I deployed it to AppHarbor, the native dlls appeared in the /bin folder (in addition to the target subfolder), which caused my app to fail.
The problem lies in the _CopyWebApplicationLegacy target, which does not execute locally (it's run only if you have a non-default output dir), thus I don't have this problem on my dev machine. Namely, it executes the following piece of code:
<!-- Copy items that have been marked to be copied to the bin folder -->
<Copy SourceFiles="#(_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectory)"
DestinationFolder="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\bin"
SkipUnchangedFiles="true"
Retries="$(CopyRetryCount)"
RetryDelayMilliseconds="$(CopyRetryDelayMilliseconds)"/>
You can see that the target folder is always /bin -- I believe it's a bug in the Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file (I can't control it on the target machine).
Is there a simple fix, or should I revert to a script in the PostBuild event (which I'll have to update with each new version)?
As mentioned here: https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2sharp/issues/1089#issuecomment-111000722
the way AppHarbor is building your project, it's triggering the old _CopyWebApplicationLegacy target, and that is basically broken. It messes up all files that are using the Copy to Output Directory property by putting them directly into the output directory instead of respecting the relative folder structure. It also doesn't run any web.config transforms you may have.
You can make your project use the newer _CopyWebApplication target instead by adding the following to your project file:
<UseWPP_CopyWebApplication>True</UseWPP_CopyWebApplication>
<PipelineDependsOnBuild>False</PipelineDependsOnBuild>
The thing I'm not sure about is if AppHarbor has some reason why they wouldn't want you to use the newer copy target instead of the old broken one.
Problem
As part of my csproj I have a custom MSBuild task that executes the YUICompressor and generates a compiled css and js file.
<PropertyGroup>
<CssOutputFile>$(OutDir)..\Styles\compiled.css</CssOutputFile>
<JavaScriptOutputFile>$(OutDir)..\Scripts\compiled.js</JavaScriptOutputFile>
<BuildDependsOn Condition="'$(Configuration)' != 'Debug'">
$(BuildDependsOn);
CompressorTarget;
</BuildDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>
This runs fine as part of the git deployment and the file is being generated, however the Azure Web Sites deployment engine will then copy all the output files to another folder. In that process it seems it takes whatever you have in your csproj instead of whatever you have in the folder. That menas that the generated compiled.css and compiled.js won't be copied (because they are not in my csproj)
What Azure does to deploy your project should be exactly the same as if you do the following:
Right click on the project and choose Publish
Change the Publish Method to 'File System'
Enter a path and click Publish
So generally, you'll want to make sure that your build process works such that you get the right file when you do this local publish. If it does, then chances are you'll get the same results when git pushing to Azure.
The workaround I used for now is adding an empty compiled.css and .js file to the csproj and I wanted to write this question in case someone goes through the same thing.
It would be great if someone from MS can comment if there are plans on doing something different for this scenario.
Depending on where you place the compiled scripts, you can use star-includes in your project file:
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="assets\**\*" />
</ItemGroup>
If Azure uses your project file to determine what gets deployed (which seems somewhat strange to start with), then that should work.
Elsewhere on the Web, you can find recommendations on using something like this to simulate the Publish feature in the VS 2005-2008 IDE from a command-line (I hope I did not goof up the syntax!):
msbuild /t:ResolveReferences;_CopyWebApplication /p:BuildingProject=true;OutDir=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ blah.csproj
Now, it looks like the .dll's copy fine. However, there are certain configuration files and template files that are copied to the bin folder which are needed for the app to work. For example, an NHibernate configuration file shows up in blah.csproj as:
<None Include="blah.cfg.xml">
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</None>
While using Publish from within the IDE copies this file as it should, the aforementioned _CopyWebApplication target does not. I need this file to be copied in the build script. Is this desired behavior for _CopyWebApplication? Any recommendations on how to fix this?
EDIT 4/21/2010:
Let me clarify that we are limited (for now) to VS 2005 and VS 2008 projects, and that our build scripts are written for MSBuild 3.x. We are not yet ready to move to VS 2010.
Let me also specify that we are looking for a solution available from within a command line so that we can automate a Publish-like command along with custom build options, and possibly automate deployments down the road.
This is just a workaround.
In the build script for publishing Web sites, after running MSBuild on the Web project itself to publish it (Targets="ResolveReferences;_CopyWebApplication"), I added a copy operation:
<Copy SourceFiles="#(ProjectBinFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(StageBin)\%(ProjectBinFiles.RecursiveDir)" />
where ProjectBinFiles is an Item representing the files in the bin directory in the source directory, and StageBin is a Property representing the bin folder in the published site's directory. So far, it seems to work.
I was having a similar issue as well. I think the answer is using MSDeploy. Investigating it now, but may provide functionality required...
I had this same issue in VS 2012 and eventually fixed it by doing the following to any files which needed to be copied:
Set the Copy to Output file property to Copy if newer
Set the Build Action file property to Content (or Compile if the file needs to be compiled)