Lightswitch - getting it to build in TeamCity - msbuild

Question

I'm trying to get a Lightswitch Project into Teamcity and have tried the following runner types:
Visual Studio (sln)
MSBuild
Command line (ran MSBuild through the command line)
All 3 runner types gave me the same error when building the Lightswitch solution:
The "UnpackExtensionsToProjectDir" task failed unexpectedly. System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Lightswitch has already been installed on the server. Have tried building the solution manually using Visual Studio on the server and it builds fine. Have also tried building the solution via the command line (using MSBuild) and it builds fine too.
Would like to ask if somebody was able to get Lightswitch building nicely on TeamCity. Cheers.

Answer 1

This is how you build via the Command line (using TeamCity)
Pre-requisites)
First make sure you have not checked in the extensions directory, this can cause issues when building.
Check that you have installed any visual studio extensions on the build machine .ie ExtensionsMadeEasy. You can test this by opening the solution in visual studio on the build machine and trying to do a build.
Lastly, in TeamCity do not use the msbuild task, use command line to call msbuild.
Step 1)
msbuild.exe mylightswitchproject.lsproj /p:OutDir=C:\test\stuff\;configuration=Release
Step 2)
Create a bat file to copy your output to the correct folder structure.
robocopy C:\test\stuff\bin C:\test\localrelease\bin *.* /MIR
robocopy C:\test\stuff\Resources C:\test\localrelease\Resources *.* /MIR
robocopy C:\test\stuff\Web C:\test\localrelease\Web *.* /MIR
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ ClientAccessPolicy.xml
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ default.htm
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ Home.aspx
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ Login.aspx
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ LogOff.aspx
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ Silverlight.js
robocopy C:\test\stuff\ C:\test\localrelease\ web.config
You can now take this folder and release it to the next environment.
Finally, if you want to create a web deployment package, out the box visual studio 2010 does not support this. However, you can copy this into an existing website then "Export" your application into a package that is then ready for web deployment via powershell.

Answer 2

The previous answers didn't work for us but Yaegor's answer provided some direction.
The issue we had was extensions are installed at the user level, not the system level. This meant the MSBuild process could not find the required extensions.
Our solution was to use a user account on the build server, log into account, setup VS.NET such that the LS project builds, and then switch the TeamCity agent service to use the new user account.
With this we were able to use the Solution runner (which is preferable to the CLI runner since it provides better logging and reporting).

Answer 3

For not Lightswitch-specific part: If command line works from console, but fails in TeamCity, most probably the issue is in the user or running as a service. You might try running TeamCity agent with the same environment.
When command line works you can then try MSBuild and Solution runners.

Answer 4

I ran into the same error when trying to set up an automated build for a lightswitch application using bamboo. Turned out to be the version of msbuild being called. If the 64bit version is called (from bamboo or the command line) I get the error:
UnpackExtensionsToProjectDir" task failed unexpectedly.
Switching to the 32bit version of msbuild fixes the problem.
32bit Path: 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe'
64bit Path: 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe'