I have a console application where I need some ideas on how to build/release the config part of the application. When running locally in VS the config file is called app.config. After a build the file changes to .exe.config. We are using XDT transformation for building the config file to the different enviroment. But what would be the smartest way to ensure the naming convension is correct when release the build version to a server?
Seems you want to use TFS Build and deploy to multiple environments via Release Management.
For handling configuration in Release Management, there are two techniques generally used Config Per Environment and Tokenization.
If you prefer a clean separation between build and deploy. To achieve that, recommend tokenizing configuration.
More details please take a look at this wonderful blog: Config Per Environment vs Tokenization in Release Management
Environment specific application settings values configured in the app.config are tokenized. Above blog's method essentially inserts tokens into setting values during the build process. When deployed the tokens are replaced with matching Release definition configuration values.
Besides, for an example of a separate build and release solution, you could also take a look at this blog: Using web.config transforms and Release Manager – TFS 2017/Team Services edition (similar to app.config)
Related
I am working on a website that will be deployed to various environments - Dev, UAT and Production - and each of them has different config settings defined through the use of config files.
The deployment process consists of two steps:
Publish the latest build output
Copy and replace the default config files with the one specific to the environment were the deployment is being done (these files are currently under source control)
I am trying to automate the deployment process using VSTS and Azure App Services but I couldn't find any task or option that would let me copy files into an App Service.
What is it the best way to implement this deployment process?
You can make this much easier on yourself by using config transforms for your web.config file.
Basically, make sure that you've defined a Build Configuration for each environment. Debug and Release are defined out of the box for Visual Studio MVC projects. You can add as many configurations as you want, such as a UAT configuration.
Once you have your configurations defined, make sure there's web.[your build config].config file located beneath your web.config in the Visual Studio solution explorer. Within each of these build configuration specific transform files, you can override settings as needed.
To close the loop, you can specify a build configuration to target when creating a build in VSTS. This will automatically execute the transform for the build configuration you've selected.
More details on build configs and web.config transforms here.
Alternatively, you could specify your app settings and connection strings directly in the Application Settings of your Azure Web App. These override anything in your deployed web.config file. What I like about this approach is that you don't have to expose sensitive information like connection strings to other developers on your team, and it removes the minor complexity of web.config transforms.
Kudu api give you the ability to upload and download files from azure web app with overwrite
The git:
https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/REST-API
Not sure if vsts have this ability.
I recently did what you describe with Jenkins . Now I'm trying to integrate Jenkins to vsts
Hope it give you an answer
I am having trouble understanding the fundamentals of octopus deployment. I am using octo.exe with the create-release and deploy-release commands. I am also using the octopack plugin.
I am getting an error but that's not really the point - I want to understand how these peices fit together. I have searched and searched on this topic but every article seems to assume the reader has a ton of background info on octopus and automated deployment already, which I do not.
My question is: what is the difference between using octopack by passing the octopack argument to msbuild and simply creating a release using octo.exe? Do I need to do both, or will one or the other suffice? If both are needed, what do each of them do exactly?
Release and deployment as defined in the Octopus Deploy Documentation:
...a project is like a recipe that describes the steps (instructions) and variables (ingredients) required to deploy your apps and services. A release captures all the project and package details so it be deployed over and over in a safe and repeatable way. A deployment is the execution of the steps to deploy a release to an environment.
OctoPack is
...the easiest way to package .NET applications from your continuous integration/automated build process is to use OctoPack.
It is easy to use, but as Alex already mentioned, you could also use nuget.exe to create the package.
Octo.exe
is a command line tool that builds on top of the Octopus Deploy REST API.
It allows you to do much of the things you'd normally do through the Octopus Deploy web interface.
So, OctoPack and octo.exe serve a different purpose. You can't create a release with OctoPack and octo.exe is not for creating packages.
Octopack is there to NuGet package the project. It has some additional properties to help with pushing a package onto the NuGet feed, etc.
octo.exe is used to automate the creation of releases on the Octopus server and optionally deploy.
Note: a release in Octopus is basically a set of instructions on how to make the deployment. It includes the snapshot of variables and steps, references to the versions of the NuGet packages, etc.
octopack is a good starter, however I stopped using it some time ago with a few reasons.
No support for .Net 2.0 projects (and I needed to move all legacy apps into Octopus)
didn't like it modifying the project files (personal preference)
Pure nuget.exe was not much more work for me.
A web application typically consists of code, config and data. Code can often be made open source on GitHub. But per-instance config and data may contain secretes therefore are inappropriate be saved in GH. Data can be imported to a persistent storage so disregard for now.
Assuming the configs are file based and are saved in another private secured SVN repo, in order to deploy the web app to OpenShift and implement CI, I need to merge config files with code prior to running build scripts. In addition, the build strategy should support GH webhooks for automated build.
My questions are, to be more specific:
Does OS BuildConfig support multiple data sources, especially from svn?
If not, how to deploy such web app to OS?
The solution I came up with so far:
Instead of relying on OS for CI, use Jenkin instead.
Merge config files with code using Jenkins.
Instead of using Git source type in BuildConfig, use binary source instead
Let jenkins run
oc start-build --from-dir=<directory>
where <directory> contains merged code/config
I'm using TFS 2013 to build many solutions; each with different solution configurations. I'm also transforming web.config based on the build definition process setting. If the build definition is configured to deploy the web project, web.config is properly being transformed - everything is good there.
However, the web.config that is copied to the build output directory is NOT being transformed. I realize this may be as designed.
So, my question is:
Is it possible for the web.config that is copied to the output directory as part of a TFS continuous integration build definition to be transformed the same as if it were deployed?
I'm not too interested in SlowCheetah as the developer has announced he's stopping work / support on the project. https://github.com/sayedihashimi/slow-cheetah/issues/158
I'm also sure I can come up with a custom post build script to do this as a last resort. But for now, I'm curious if anyone has been successful at getting a transformed web.config copied to the output directory of a TFS build definition.
As far as I understand, you have only two options to apply transforms: SlowCheetah (based on Visual Studio APIs) or publish the site. Unless you use a different "transformation" language, your only choice is to write your own tool.
If you want you can use a different language and tools. As an example, I have been very successful with XML Preprocess.
I would recommend that you drop all of the configs to your build drop and do the transform at deployment time. That way you don't have to rebuild to deploy the same version. If you use Release Management for Visual Studio for deployment you can have two conversions. The base one as dev.config that you use at debug time and the deployed one that matches the configuration that you build that has the RM variables ready to replace depending on the environment.
Am very new this kind of S/W development industry and since am here as system engineer, my task is to implement a Build and Release management system using Jenkins. So, far am able to install, configure and even build the war files for my java proj using maven after checking out the sourcecode from my svn. Now the actual task it to build mutliple war file for the same proj for my different environment like UAT, Staging and Prod. I dont want to create multiple jobs, however I would like to use the multi-configuration option to achieve this. So, can anyone please help me in doing this?
Thanks,
Sree
I strongly advise against building environment specific release binaries. Instead address what it is that makes one environment different from another. Generally it is configuration held in property files recording information like:
Database URLs and credentials
System sizing information
..
Baking this into the release makes your software very inflexible. For example why should you have to rebuild your software everytime the database password is changed?
The solution is the use of standards like JNDI. In tomcat you can use context files to set datasources and other variables.