How can i configure a build definition to allow me to pick a solution configuration at build time?
I have 3 configurations in my solution: (Local, UAT and Live).
I want people to pick and the configuration they need and the build will do the config transforms, deployment etc. as required. I have the build script I need, just need to know how I can switch upon the configuration.
If I cannot use the actual configurations, a custom property would do, but obviously I need to be able to access it in my build script.
My opinion is that your Build Defition should contain all three configurations, so that Build shall execute all three of them by default.Then, you can insert a custom argument in your build process template as an "Configuration Override" with default = empty.Checking this Hofman-post you can have your argument part of the 'Queue new Build dialog.So, when your users queue a new build, they either leave this empty and build executes all configs, or they enter one of the three and only the one selected shall be executed.There are various ways to implement this in your build process template, in general you might want to intervene in section For Each Configuration in BuildSettings.PlatformConfigurations:
and check if your custom argument is empty (so all nodes should execute), or if it is filled with a specific entry (so it should proceed only once). Further handling of a user input that does not comply with any of the available configs should be added, so that build can graciously fail.
Related
When looking at the list of recent builds for a Plan in Bamboo, there is column in the summary called "Flags". It contains values like "Custom build" (if you started the build manually using "Run customized") and "Custom revision" (if you ran the build against something other than the head of master).
Is it possible to add a step to my Plan that potentially puts my own value in this field for the current build? In particular, I want to have logic that does this based on build variable, basically saying "if this variable equals this value, then add this custom tag to this build" and have the tag show up in that column of the summary, letting me see whether each build used that specific value for the build variable.
I believe what you may be looking for will require two plugins created by Atlassian:
Conditional Tasks for Bamboo. This will allow you to trigger tasks based on variables.
Inject Variables. This will allow you to set certain variables in your tasks which can even be picked up by the other plugin.
I have managed to do Continuous deployment for my Web project using TFS Msbuild.
I have goggled for few hours but couldn't find a relative link to achieve Continuous Deployment for windows service.
Possible to do CD for windows service using TFS Build Definitions? i.e for every check in below steps should be performed, I am using TFS2010 with Windows Server 2008 R2
1] Stop Service,
2] Copy respective Project folder from (Source) Build server to (Destination Server)'staging server1' or 'staging server2'
3] Start Services (willing to do this step manually)
Any blog,tutorial references to achieve this? My guess is need to use Power shell scripts but not sure.
Should be ok, you'll need to install an agent on the box you're deploying to. And you'll need to be able to exit the XAML templates (you'll probably want to copy your existing template that does your build and just add the stop/copy/start stuff onto the end of it).
After your CI build, you'll need to edit it (the XAML template) to start and stop the service you can use the "invoke process" activity (you'll probably want to do something like make it generic and pass in the service name as an argument - note you can change the display names etc in the Metadata argument so it appears meaningful in your build definition).
As far as copying stuff across goes, you can do this fairly easily by accessing properties like the drop location.
Should be fairly straight forward - once you get your head round modifying the templates!
Edit:
Sorry for not responding sooner, I'd have to revise my earlier comment, this isn't as straight forward as it seems unless you really know what you want, I have been thinking about this and like skinning cats, there are more than one ways to achieve this... I've rewritten this a few times so I hope the edit's make sense :)
Boils down to the following:
1) Pass into your template the build agent/machine you want to run this on (this can be done as a simple string, or as an AgentReservationSpec - up to you), since it's unlikely to be the machine that you run your actual CI build on. This is done in the Arguments section of the XAML, as noted before, if you want to edit the display name/description you can edit the Metadata Argument. This machine needs a TFS agent installed of course.
2) Run the task on the remote machine, this is done by adding the Agent Scope activity into your template, you will have to use the info from step 1 to get the ReservationSpec (so would be easier if you add the argument as an AgentReservationSpec or you'll need to resolve this in the template)
2.1) Run the stop/uninstall, this is done via dropping in a (two actually) Invoke Process activity, Invoke Process can take arguments and you need to point it to the executable you're executing, so you'll want to use this, one for the NET command (i.e. NET STOP ), and one for InstallUtil.exe.
2.2) Copy the files from your CI to the remote server, you can use the Copy Directory activity for this, it needs a couple of parameters, the main one is the source location, you should be able to drop in a GetBuildDetail activity, give it a name then reference .DropLocation to get this, destination is wherever you like you're installing to.
2.3) Install the new service as step 2.1, you need to use Invoke Process to install the service, then you can use another to start the service up.
I haven't covered everything, but I haven't set this up myself so I'm sure there are a few pitfalls or things I haven't though of. Off the top of my head this makes sense, but maybe someone that knows better can poke a few holes in it :)
I want to use a different API url for my iPhone app when I'm debugging or doing an ad-hoc deployment. Is there any way to detect from code (if adhoc) use this Url rather than the default one?
There are two ways I can think of:
1.) Conditional Compilation
Since you have to "Archive" the product to distribute the adhoc build, you might as well setup a new config for Archive and leverage the preprocessor.
2.) Alternate default .settings files based on Release/Debug/AdHoc.
Same suggestion as above, but using a .settings file instead of compilation. Personally, I'd recommend this over the conditional compilation because it can be changed (and saved) after deployment if you want to test other environments without redeploying.
EDIT
Conditional Compilation refers to using "ifdef" blocks right? I tried this once but couldn't get it to check for AD-HOC, only DEBUG seemed to work
Correct.
There is not an "ADHOC" macro defined by default. But you can easily add one.
Here's how you might go about setting up an additional configuration with a new preprocessor macro for your ADHOC builds:
Step 1: Setup a new Config (optional... you might just use Release... up to you).
Step 2: Add the preprocessor macro for that config. In my screenshot it only shows Debug and Release because I didn't actually add a new config. If you added a new Config (and called it something like "AdHoc", it should show up here as well:
Add ADHOC=1 just like the DEBUG=1 macro for the debug config.
Step 3: Either modify your current Scheme, or duplicate it, such that the "Archive" step uses your new configuration:
I'm trying to configure a set of build configurations in TeamCity 6 and am trying to model a specific requirement in the cleanest possible manner way enabled by TeamCity.
I have a set of acceptance tests (around 4-8 suites of tests grouped by the functional area of the system they pertain to) that I wish to run in parallel (I'll model them as build configurations so they can be distributed across a set of agents).
From my initial research, it seems that having a AcceptanceTests meta-build config that pulls in the set of individual Acceptance test configs via Snapshot dependencies should do the trick. Then all I have to do is say that my Commit build config should trigger AcceptanceTests and they'll all get pulled in. So, lets say I also have AcceptanceSuiteA, AcceptanceSuiteB and AcceptanceSuiteC
So far, so good (I know I could also turn it around the other way and cause the Commit config to trigger AcceptanceSuiteA, AcceptanceSuiteB and AcceptanceSuiteC - problem there is I need to manually aggregate the results to determine the overall success of the acceptance tests as a whole).
The complicating bit is that while AcceptanceSuiteC just needs some Commit artifacts and can then live on it's own, AcceptanceSuiteA and AcceptanceSuiteB need to:
DeploySite (lets say it takes 2 minutes and I cant afford to spin up a completely isolated one just for this run)
Run tests against the deployed site
The problem is that I need to be able to ensure that:
the website only gets configured once
The website does not get clobbered while the two suites are running
If I set up DeploySite as a build config and have AcceptanceSuiteA and AcceptanceSuiteB pull it in as a snapshot dependency, AFAICT:
a subsequent or parallel run of AcceptanceSuiteB could trigger another DeploySite which would clobber the deployment that AcceptanceSuiteA and/or AcceptanceSuiteB are in the middle of using.
While I can say Limit the number of simultaneously running builds to force only one to happen at a time, I need to have one at a time and not while the dependent pieces are still running.
Is there a way in TeamCity to model such a hierarchy?
EDIT: Ideas:-
A crap solution is that DeploySite could set a 'in use flag' marker and then have the AcceptanceTests config clear that flag [after AcceptanceSuiteA and AcceptanceSuiteB have completed]. The problem then becomes one of having the next DeploySite down the pipeline wait until said gate has been opened again (Doing a blocking wait within the build, doesnt feel right - I want it to be flagged as 'not yet started' rather than looking like it's taking a long time to do something). However this sort of stuff a flag over here and have this bit check it is the sort of mutable state / flakiness smell I'm trying to get away from.
EDIT 2: if I could programmatically alter the agent configuration, I could set Agent Requirements to require InUse=false and then set the flag when a deploy starts and clear it after the tests have run
Seems you go look on the Jetbrains Devnet and YouTrack tracker first and remember to use the magic word clobber in your search.
Then you install groovy-plug and use the StartBuildPrecondition facility
To use the feature, add system.locks.readLock. or system.locks.writeLock. property to the build configuration.
The build with writeLock will only start when there are no builds running with read or write locks of the same name.
The build with readLock will only start when there are no builds running with write lock of the same name.
therein to manage the fact that the dependent configs 'read' and the DeploySite config 'writes' the shared item.
(This is not a full productised solution hence the tracker item remains open)
EDIT: And I still dont know whether the lock should be under Build Parameters|System Properties and what the exact name format should be, is it locks.writeLock.MYLOCKNAME (i.e., show up in config with reference syntax %system.locks.writeLock.MYLOCKNAME%) ?
Other puzzlers are: how does one manage giving builds triggered by build completion of a writeLock task read access - does the lock get dropped until the next one picks up (which would allow another writer in) - or is it necessary to have something queue up the parent and child dependency at the same time ?
We have a particular file, say X.zip that is only modified by 1 or 2 people. Hence we don't want the build to trigger on every check-in, as the other files are mostly untouched.
I need to check for a condition prior to building, whether the checked-in item is "X.zip" or not.. if yes, then trigger a build, else don't. We use only CI builds.
Any idea on how to trigger the build only when this particular file is checked-in? Any other approaches would be greatly appreciated as i am a newbie in TFS...
Tara.
I don't know of any OOTB feature which can do this, what you would need to do is write your own custom MSBuild task which is executed prior to the build running (pre-build action).
The task will then need to use the TFS API to check the current check in for the file you want and if it's not found you'll have to set the task to failed.
This isn't really ideal as it'll indicate to Team Build a build failure, which, depending on whether you're using check in policies, may be unhelpful. It'd also be harder to at-a-glance work out which builds failed because of the task and which failed because of a real problem.
You can change the build to occur less frequently rather than every check in, which will reduce load on your build server.
Otherwise you may want to dig into Cruise Control .NET, it may support better conditional builds.
If you could move X.zip into it's own folder, then you could set up a CI build with a workspace that only looked at the folder containing X.zip.
You would then need to add an explicit call to tf get to download the rest of the code as Team Build only downloads what the workspace is looking at.
But this might be simpler than the custom task approach?