I'm starting to use MSDeploy quite aggressively within our Visual studio web projects projects as a mechanism for producing self contained build artefacts that have everything needed to setup and run themselves on a remote server. This works fine for simple web apps, however we have some web applications that need additional command line tools to be run on the remote servers before the application can be considered to be "deployed".
I have followed Sayed's advice to include additional files and folders within my package, but they appear as a subfolder within the deploy of my web application (and that's not good, as the files are only needed once at deploy time).
Ideally, I'd like the package.zip to contain the tools as a set of sibling folders to the IIS aplication, and have a mechanism to run an exe within those folders at deploy time. (I think this is via the deploy.manifest, but would like advice here too) but NOT actually leave the files on the remote machine.
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Via VSTS I am trying to automate the following process which is currently performed manually:
Within VS 2017 perform a publish to file system.
Set settings in web.config.
Repeat 1 & 2, for each environment, e.g. Test, UAT, Production, etc.
Copy those files to an FTP server.
Logon to secure infrastructure, download files from FTP, and copy into place on IIS target servers.
The secure infrastructure is locked down, and has limited internet access. The FTP is used as a way to move files into that infrastructure.
Within this question I specifically want to address elements; 1, 2, and 3.
The struggle I am having is that VSTS seems setup to deploy web apps into Azure Web Sites or publicly accessible IIS. Whilst IIS is my eventual target, initially I was hoping to achieve a file system deployment - similar to what VS 2017 provides.
I have tried using MSBuild to create a package, using; /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true.
Then MSDeploy to extract the package into a folder msdeploy.exe -verb:sync -source:package="Package.zip" -dest:contentPath="content".
However that results in the following error Source (sitemanifest) and destination (contentPath) are not compatible for the given operation.
It looks like I can use MSBuild and /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=VSTS to deploy to a folder at build time, but that seems a little awkward within the structure of VSTS. E.g. I have to repeatedly build the solution for each environment.
After I have the solution deployed into a folder, I intend to use VSTS to push to FTP.
Is there a better way to do this? For example; VSTS Azure deploy provides the ability to easily set connection sting parameters.
You can achieve what you want to do with the FTP Upload build/release task.
1 - You don't have to publish to the file system.
Just create a new build definition based on asp.net application template:
This will add the tasks you need to build and package and as a final step to publish the artifacts to a drop location.
After you published it to a drop location you can either continue on build by adding the ftp task or you could add the ftp task to a release pipeline. This is up to you.
The ftp upload task then needs to be added after the publish artifacts task, like:
For 2 and 3 it is best that you use a release pipeline, where you can add several environments and tasks to it. That you can add your ftp task and get it from artifact (your build) that you will add to the release. The web.config settings can also be changed using release tasks.
I come from a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI-CD) implementation project background for java web applications. Now i am working for a .NET based project. Microsoft technologies is completely new to me. It is using the MsBuild for the build process via Jenkins. I am learning MsBuild at this time. The more i read, the more confused i am with the Microsoft way of doing this.
I noticed that the msbuild is executed for every environment where the app is going to be deployed using various configuration and profiles based on the environment for the deployment. Below are some msbuild commands for 2 different environments (PIE & TEST)
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MSBuild\\12.0\\Bin\\MSBuild.exe" /p:Configuration=PIE /m:4 /nr:false src/myapp.sln
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MSBuild\\12.0\\Bin\\MSBuild.exe" /p:Configuration=TEST /t:Rebuild /m:2 /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=TEST src/myapp.sln
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MSBuild\\12.0\\Bin\\MSBuild.exe" /p:Configuration=STAGE /t:Rebuild /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:PublishProfile=STAGE /m:2 SprintA/src/myapp.sln
i may be wrong, but i feel that the code being deployed to the two environments (when the code progress from PIE to TEST) is being build for each environment which is not the real code progression concept. IMHO, the build is done once and its progressed to subsequent environments for testing/validation as long as there are no bugs in the code. The various environment specific settings are handled via config files inside the package and the containers (tomcat for a java app) are started with the parameters that reads/parse the confif files.
Is there a way to handle this in .NET? The app is deployed in IIS
UPDATE:
The more i do research reading various docs and blogs, i came across the web publishing method using msbuild for each configuration and the deploy/publish profiles. IS this just the standard way that the mass follows for a .net project's CICD?
Yes, this is something Microsoft realized and is enforced using the new Release System.
Basically you have a "process" (Build) building your code and producing artifacts (ie. website file structure, nuget package, installers, etc) in this process you typically take care of things like applying the version value to your assemblies, minifiying js and css files or anything not related with the any specific environment.
Then you have another "process" (Release) to configure your artifacts based on the environment where they will be deployed (ie. modifying web.config files from your website) and deploy those artifacts to the desired environment without having to build them again. (ie. push nuget package to some pre-production nuget feed, copy you website structure to the server, etc)
How do you implement these two "processes"?. Well, that depends on your preference and tools. If you use Visual Studio Team Services you have these processes clearly defined out of the box by the infrastructure, and a lot of built in task to support them.
I have not worked with Jenkins but as long as you can use msbuild you could have 2 msbuild projects one to build your artifacts from the source code on different branches and another one to deploy to different environments base on some configurations (ei. your PIE & TEST) and of course you could use tools like powershell or MSbuild custom tasks to support more advanced scenarios within your processes.
I am using Visual Studio 2013. I have all components installed on my machine needed to run this application I am questioning. I have not completed the application to deploy for testing but some questions arose before completion that I need addressed now; to prevent overhauling later.
Here's how it should work when deployed to clients.
Client installs application which runs on desktop not windows store in WPF.
The application is per user and runs for all users on the local machine.
Each user needs to read and write data to a database file but it needs to be the same MDF being used. Therefore each process of the application, no matter the user session, on the same machine, all interact with the same database / same data.
Question: When adding the database to the project where will it be installed by default? In the applications program folder along with program? If so what restrictions exist to read/write to the database and are there any? I have added no extra security on my side. The info isn't private or critical.
Question: Would end users need to install any sort of SQL in order for the application to do this? If so I can package it with the install but this seems like alot of overhead during install.
If the MDF is installed per user how do I change this to install it once for all users?
Before saying so, yes this needs to be a database and not a file. Reasons I need not describe. I have considered alternative but this is by far the best solution so please no alternatives.
When you add mdf file to your project and set properly the value of Copy to Output Directory, it will be copied to the bin directory of your project whenever you build the project. When you create setup project for your app project, it will be by default copied to the folder where your app is installed. You can either specify different location in your setup project or copy the file to the desired location during the first run of your app.
There are several suitable folders in Windows, one possible choice is %PROGRAMDATA% C:\ProgramData folder, but it is by default read only for non-admin users. If you do not worry about security, go for %PUBLIC% C:\Users\Public. It is completely accessible for all users within interactive group.
I recommend to package LocalDB with your project. It can be installed silently with one line of code, though only with admin privileges. For non-admin click-once install you would have to use SQL CE, which is quite different and uses sdf files.
I think you should do it this way: include a seed database MDF file in the application and copy it to a %PUBLIC%\YourApp folder when the application first launches. Optionally include LocalDB install in your setup project.
My company uses TFS 2010 to deploy our web apps from our local environment to our development environment. Here's the compiled output in my local directory for one of our vended web apps, ProGet, (http://inedo.com/proget/overview) in question that isn't deploying correctly. I expect all of what I see below to deploy to our development server:
Here's my .xaml build file:
Finally, here's my solution in Visual Studio:
When I queue the build, this is what's built out to our development server - notice it's missing a bunch of files/folders, but it does include "Resources" and "bin" and web.config:
This app is a vended application, ProGet, an already developed corporate Nuget repository that we purchased a source code license for. Does anyone have any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
EDIT
Here's a screenshot of my local IIS and the window to the right is a result of right clicking the website and choosing "Explore". Notice the *.cs files. Weird they don't compile down.
The Default Build Template (DefaultTemplate.xaml) should output the same files you get when you compile locally.
However, from your screenshots it looks like you are using a custom build template xxxx_DeploymentProcess.xaml that is obviously doing something different with how it outputs the build files. There is no way for us (stackoverflow community) to know what your custom build process is doing.
You could try switching back to the default template, and we'd be able to help you then. But, there's a good chance that you are using a custom build template for a reason, and you might not want to eliminate it before you know what it's doing.
I have various IIS hosted service hosts with simple svc files etc. What I want to do is to be able to create deployment packages from our test server using IIS Export Package in a way that parameters may be saved and picked up at Export time so that the Export is repeatable and automatable. I.e. the Export will always use the necessary Manifest extensions such as XmlFile etc.
The web sites exist in the solutions and are then picked up using a Web Deployment project in each solution so that config substitutions are done etc.
We are currently on VS 2008 SP1 so do not have direct access to VS 2010
The first issue I have with MsBuild (running in TeamCity) is how to build the IIS web site (with target=Package) when there is no project file? In this way maybe I can avoid the Web Deployment projects (I use them for various configurations but don't want to do it this way for deploying to Production but rather export from our fully tested staging into a package file to be imported onto a production server).
Secondly, I want to avoid having to configure the Export in IIS 7 each time I run it. I want it simply to pick up the correct set of extensions to use and create the necessary parameters for me. Is this done from a Manifest file? I can see how to use the parameters.xml but I am unclear whether I need to use a manifest.xml (created by hand) and how to link it in. The idea is that a tester/deployment person should be able to do the Export simply without having to enable all of the extensions that are required
Any help or guidance will be greatly appreciated.
Ok, in the meantime I got it figured out.
I ended up using the document at Package an Application for the Windows Web Application Gallery which gave me the means by which I could extend our automated build in TeamCity to create the "repeatable" export packages.
In short I will use the current Web Deployment Projects to create the deployment artefacts and then in MsBuild combine them with the pre-prepared manifest.xml and parameters.xml files into Build artefacts folder and zip them up into a package. From there the task will be to Import the package into IIS Deploy in the target environment.
The parameters.xml file will be used to set the HostName for wcf clients and services, connection strings, app settings etc.
This turned out to be the best solutuion bcause I can put it into our automated build.