First time MSBuild/CI setup. I've got all my class libraries building, but am getting hung up on a web deployment project. This requires several binaries that are to be copied from a sibling folder. The folder contains other binaries that I do not want copied; I just want what it needs and nothing more.
The csproj files specify the binaries with a handy "hintpath" so I can point them to the right place. This doesn't seem to be present in the wdproj.
My preference is not to add them to subversion in the web site's bin directory.
What's the secret sauce?
I hesitate to answer my own question this way but since nobody else seems to have any ideas... I switched the site being compiled from a Web Site to a Web Application Project. That's introduced its own problems, but at least now I don't have to keep a bin folder in subversion.
Related
A common issue I keep bumping into for web projects in net core, is the need for sharing javascript in easy to use modules from project to project. Often times large quantities of code written in VS project A could be very much used in project B, sometimes in the same solution.
Restrictions:
Must be self hosted, not publicly exposed, only within local network etc etc can access the libs/modules/packages/etc
Ideally can be performed via visual studio projects and make use of build tasks, powershell, msbuild, or other such automation tools to deploy and package, minify, bundle, etc etc the javascript libraries.
The absolute ideal is if this can all be hosted from just a network folder
NPM/Yarn
I'm not super familiar with either of these, but is there a way we can drag and drop javascript code we've built into some designated folder, perhaps modify some form of manifest, json or xml file or what have you, and then anyone can just npm install those packages? I guess what I'm wondering is, is there a way to tell npm "This folder now is a source of packages you can install from"?
Bonus points: If said "trust this folder" config can be set inside of the VS project, so if someone new grabs the git repo, it will just work "out of the box" and they dont need to go through steps configuring npm or yarn so it knows how to find those packages.
Libman
Same as above, but mostly I'm trying to figure out if there is any way at all to configure libman from VS. It's the default and what is currently in use, but it just has its four default CDNs it comes with that it trusts and I am not seeing any way at all to tell Libman "Here's a now resource for files to trust, add that to the selectable drop down"
But I am seeing basically zero configuration as an option for libman, which is quite disappointing.
Nuget
This is the other option that is already popular locally, but something about using nuget to deliver js files when NPM, Yarn, and Libman already exist sets my teeth on edge, but, we have I believe a locally hosted nuget server that could be used already, so the infrastructure I believe is already setup, if not, I know how to do it. I do like the fact that nuget 100% for sure could leverage actual projects and build steps and msbuild and etc for deploying.
Conclusion
What's the popular and easy way to do this nowadays? Best case scenario is if there's a way to go, "Put a manifest.json file in the folder root that points to all the modules inside, then add it as a trusted source to your package manager, and now you can install those packages"
I am trying to retrofit an existing ASP.NET web app into our business's MobileFirst environment while using as much of the same code base as possible between the 2 projects.
The issue that I am running into is that while, the browser app is mostly a single page, it rests within a sub folder (Views/ControllerPath). Therefore to link to any sources (js, imgs) around 95% of links are preceded with a '../'. My issue is that in the MobileFirst project, you can't seem to change the directory of where the mainFile is (defaults to /common/index.html).
Just so you are aware, I did find the mainFile tag in the application-descriptor.xml file and I can change it to a different path so my file in the subfolder does come up. But on preview, MobileFirst injects some js/css dependencies that it cannot find (I'm guessing because it is created in the 'common' folder). Is there any way that I can change where to search for these MobileFirst dependencies?
The answer is no.
The mainFile value must be the index.html that is placed in the common folder.
Changing this value (which we would actually love to remove it from application-descriptor.xml so you won't ever see it and be able to touch it) is unsupported.
The only other option for this element is to point it to a remote server for WebSphere Portal support. Other than that, modifications are not supported.
First day on a project and first day with Maven and I've already wasted a lot of time trying to get it to build.
It appears the issue is that this old project has config, POMs, etc, that have many broken URLs embedded in them. i.e. Maven generated stack traces are presenting lots of URLs that are broken when trying to download project dependencies.
I have been given only the project source which includes Maven config files. I have not been supplied with existing Maven repositories, project dependent libraries or any build environment, etc.
I have been hacking away at these files but I don't get very far with each build attempt.
Am I doing something fundamentally wrong or is this Maven config really stuck in 2008?
Update:
My POM really was stuck in 2008, i.e. by virtue of versioning, it is a snapshot in time while the rest of the Java world moves on.
Some of the dependencies were no longer in any repositories, most of which were defunct projects and so I've ceased to use them. I had to rewrite the entire POM. I had to spend a lot of time tweaking versions to ensure compatibility between dependencies and between plugins. After much battling; some plugins just wouldn't coexist, clobbering each other.
All in all, it was many, many hours effort...too many for this project with only one developer, and I believe I only now know enough to be dangerous.
The good ol' IDE build system would have been a better choice in this instance.
ftr's advice (in the comments section) is right: Maven can't download certain dependencies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those dependencies don't exist anymore. It could just be that the extra-repos section of the Maven configuration is now missing certain repositories, and/or there's some other connection issue (like bad proxy config - which may lead to you being able to access certain repos but not others).
I've been in a similar situation, and found out that while initially Maven reported errors when trying to download about 80% of the dependencies, after various tweaks on Maven's config I ended up making it download all of the dependencies (well except one which was really just a custom jar somebody did and which was fetched directly from the local file system, but that's besides the point).
Here's what I'd do:
Of all the dependencies that Maven says it can't download, try to spot 2 or 3 which are "well know" (like maybe if it says it can't download Servlet or some Spring library, write down the exact URL's he's trying to contact for those).
Manually check if those URL are indeed accessible (via browser). If so, make sure that the dependencies exist for the version Maven is looking for. Maybe they have been updated since the project was created, and the old version is no longer kept. In this case, 90% of the time the solution is to simply update Maven's pom to point to the new version.
If manually checking the dependency's URL shows you that in fact the dependency exists, for the version Maven is looking for, make sure there's no proxy or some other form of internet connection "extra config" which is done for your browser, but not for Maven. If that's the case, just update Maven's config with all those extra params (proxy, proxy authentication, etc).
If the dependency URL doesn't exist at all, try googling to see if that dependency doesn't now exist on some other repo. For example many of the JBoss dependencies (like Hibernate, etc) have changed repo location somewhere around 2007-2009. If that's the case just add the new repo to Maven's repo list (and remove the old one if it no longer exists).
Finally, the good old shameful way to fix this is to go to a colleague which has (or had) something to do with your project at some point, and copy his local Maven repo to your machine :)
I recently wrote an Eclipse plugin, and I'm trying to get some coworkers to install it for testing.
As far as I can tell, dropping the .jar into the dropins folder in Eclipse is supposed to install it, but it seems to not be working on any installation of Eclipse but the one I developed on. This seems to be a problem with the dependencies not being installed.
I thought that the dropins folder was supposed to automatically calculate and install dependencies, but perhaps I'm wrong. If so, how can I distribute it without having everybody install each dependency separately?
I'd recommend against using the dropins folder. It is unreliable as you have seen. Instead, I'd recommend that you export your plugin as an update site.
So:
Create a feature for your plugin. This is a lot simpler than it sounds. See Lars Vogel's tutorial: http://www.vogella.de/articles/EclipseFeatureProject/article.html
File -> Export... -> Deployable Features.
In the options, section, select "Package as individual jar files..." (see screenshot)
Tweak other things as required
Finish
Now, you have an update site that you can zip up, or put on a web server somewhere. Your colleagues can add that update site just like any other. To install, make sure that they also have all of the dependencies available from other update sites and that they have "Contact all update sites..." checked.
The nice thing about this is that if you place your plugins on a web server somewhere, and you replace it with a new versions, people will be able to update transparently.
I know how many questions have been asked around this, but I still can't figure out the answer to my question.
I need to deploy an ASP.NET 4.0 site, and I want to do something like this:
Get latest version og the entire solution - a website and a couple class projects that are used by the webapp (I am doing this already using CCNet- not a problem)
Build and deploy in debug config to a test site
Build and deploy in a release configuration to a staging site
If everything looks fine on the staging site, I'll run a script that deploys the release build staging site, to 7-8 similar sites used by different customers on the same server. In the future this will be on another server.
There is MSDeploy (webdeploy 2.0), aspnet_compiler, MSBuild, Powershell (my weapon of choice..) and propably more ... I am not 100% sure what to use where?
I would love to mimick the "only deploy files needed to run the site" from the Vs2010 GUI assisted deployment, and I'd love to have the possibility of not touching some existing folders in the websites that we deploy to.
I feel like I should use MSDeploy a lot ... but I find it pretty hard to GET. I'm reading away in IIS.NET and I've heard the Scott Hanselman/Jon Arild Tørresdal podcast. I am not 100% sure where to start ... and I'm not a MSBuild expert, so Powershell is looking pretty good to me. But I feel I'm missing out on the right tools by going that way ...
What tool would you use in which step??
According to me, MSDeploy is build to achieve all of your needs with much more control. MSDeploy is the product of IIS team and it's far more feature rich.
Answers to your questions
Considerations: Svn as Source control, MSDeploy for deployment
You can use SVN Command line tool to get latest version of your source code in some temp directory and build it using MSBuild command line tool. Then you can create a Deployment Package or a Publish Content Package which can be deployed to specific environment. I am currently working on a project which can basically create a deployment package independent of the environment, means the pacakge can be deployed to any stage/test/live environment. Sample for creating a deployment package is...
msbuild C:\Projects\NimBuildDeployTestApp\NimBuildDeployWebApp/NimBuildDeployWebApp.csproj /t:package /p:Configuration=Release /p:PackageLocation=C:\Temp\DeployPackage\NimTestWebApp.zip /p:EnablePackageProcessLoggingAndAssert=true
Use MSDeploy command line tool to deploy the package as below
msdeploy -verb:sync -source:package=packagelocation -dest:CONFIGURABLE_ACCORDING_TO_YOUR_NEEDS
User Step 2 to build the solution in Release mode using MSBUILD and configure the dest parameter in msdeploy.
If everything seems fine on your staging server, run the deploymentToLive.batch file which will deploy a particular PublishContent/package on your live server. Execute 7 msdeploy scripts in same batch file or else use DFS (which is far more complex solution)
MSDeploy is definitely the way to go. One thing that you may consider is having a deployment package ready which can be deployed onto any environment of yours. What I mean by that is your web.config file won't be similar for all the envrionments, and hence create a deployment package which contains web.confif file for all the environments. Refer to my solution here
Hope this helps and gives you confidence in moving forward to automate your deployment process