"(new_)git_repository" and "(new_)http_archive" workspace rules deal with external projects in such way that any external dependency is copied to temporary directory linked to workspace as ${WORKSPACE}/bazel-workspace/external/${EXTERNAL_DEP_NAME} on build or prefetch.
I'd like to save external dependencies locally in my repo, so if remote repository vanishes i'd have copy of dependency even on a new machine, where it wasn't cached.
Can I somehow change default behaviour without writing custom workspace rule?
Bazel does have a flag you could use for this: --experimental_repository_cache. It is designed to be a system-wide cache so that multiple projects on one machine don't have to re-download dependencies, but you could use it per-repository. Basically you'd say:
bazel build --experimental_repository_cache=$PWD/my_cache //foo
Then all external repositories would be downloaded to the my_cache directory in your project.
This is a cache keyed by the hash of your external dependencies' content, so it's not going to be very human-readable, but it would let you keep your external dependencies in your VCS fairly easily.
(Theoretically you could even check in a .bazelrc file to specify this option by default, but --experimental_repository_cache only takes an absolute path right now, so it's a bit impractical. I filed a bug to handle the relative path use case.)
I might be wrong but it sounds like you want to just check it in the VCS. If we're talking about an http archive then download it manually, stick it under the relevant "third_party" sub folder with the BUILD file you craft for it and you're done.
If you want to use Bazel mechanisms to download and check-in the external dependencies then this isn't currently supported.
Maybe you should open an issue
Related
After downloading an archive throug http_archive I'd like to run a script to generate a BUILD file from the folder structure and Cmake files in it (I currently do that by hand and it is easy enough that it could be scripted). I don't find anything on how to open, read and write files in the starlark documentation but since http_archive itself is loaded from a bzl file (haven't found the source of that file yet though...) and generates BUILD files (by unpacking them from archives) I guess it must be possible to write a wrapper for http_archive that also generates the BUILD file?
This is a perfect use case for a custom repository rule. That lets you run arbitrary commands to generate the files for the repository, along with some helpers for common operations like downloading a file over HTTP using the repository cache (if configured). A repository rule conceptually similar to a normal rule, but with much less infrastructure because it's running during the loading phase when most of the Bazel infrastructure doesn't apply yet.
The starlark implementation of http_archive is in http.bzl. The core of it is a single call to ctx.download_and_extract. Your custom rule should do that too. http_archive then calls workspace_and_buildfile and patch from util.bzl, which do what they sound like. Instead of workspace_and_buildfile, you should call ctx.execute to run your command to generate the BUILD file. You could call patch if you want, or skip that functionality if you're not going to use it.
The repository_ctx page in the documentation is the top-level reference for everything your repository rule's implementation function can do, if you want to extend it further.
When using http_archive, you can use the build_file argument to create a BUILD file. To generate it dynamically, I think you can use the patch_cmds argument to run external commands.
On TFS 2018.2, I am building a release pipeline implying the use of :
Applications configuration files
PowerShell scripts
HTML/Markdown templates (for release notes)
My applications configuration files are located on a net share for now and that works fine but I would like to version them later on.
I was about to store other files on my existing TFVC repository but I did not find a way to get them (with their directory) without adding the entire repository as a release input artifact.
I do not want to add them to my build artifacts since these files will be used for all my releases, no matter the applications I am building.
What is the recommended way
to store these files
to get them on release execution ?
I have been tempted to use the library but I feel this would be a misuse of it since it has been designed for secure files...
The correct solution to this problem is something you've already hit upon: Add them to your build artifacts. In fact, it's better than pulling them from a separate repo for a very important reason:
Your deployment scripts are going to evolve along with your application. You lose the connection between "this version of the application was deployed with these particular scripts" if the scripts come from a separate location.
You have a lot of options to control the circumstances under which they get pubilshed/downloaded:
You can use conditions on the publish artifacts tasks to control when they get published
You can use artifact filters on the release definition to control when they get downloaded as part of a release
I was wondering if anyone could help.We have the following project structure in our company :
Code/Common
Code/Project1
Code/Project2
etc...
When the Common Project builds, it has a PostBuild Event that copies all the relevant files into the Code/Common/Binaries folder. Then all the other Projects reference the Common components in this folder.
However, what we are struggling with is that when TFS Online checks-out the solution it does so to c:\a\src and the Common binaries are placed in c:\a\src\Binaries. Now, when the other projects (Project1 etc) do their build it cannot find the Common Assemblies, as not only are they removed, but the paths are different from what it expects them to be in c:\a\src\Common\Binaries instead of c:\a\src\Binaries.
Is there anyway to tell the build server to not delete those files in the "Binaries" directory and to specify the folder location to checkout to? Or how one one go about solving such a problem?
Thanks very much
A build server is a transient thing, you cannot rely on files to be there.
You need to either Create Nuget Packages for you common output and then consume these in your other projects (the 'proper' way), or you will need to check your dependencies into source control after each build so you can then reference them in subsequent builds (the 'really frowned apon' way).
We are using TFS to build our solutions. We have some help files that we don't include in our projects as we don't want to grant our document writer access to the source. These files are placed in a folder on our network.
When the build kicks off we want the process to grab the files from the network location and place them into a help folder that is part of source.
I have found an activity in the xaml for the build process called CopyDirectory. I think this may work but I'm not sure what values to place into the Destination and Source properties. After each successful build the build is copied out to a network location. We want to copy the files from one network location into the new build directory.
I may be approaching this the wrong way, but any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
First, you might want to consider your documentation author placing his documents in TFS. You can give him access to a separate folder or project without granting access to your source code. The advantages of this are:
Everything is in source control. Files dropped in a network folder are easily misplaced or corrupted, and you have no history of changes to them. The ideal for any project is that everything related to the project is captured in source control so you can lift out a complete historical version whenever one is needed.
You can map the documentation to a different local folder on your build server such that simply executing the "get" of the source code automatically copies the documentation exactly where it's needed.
The disadvantage is that you may need an extra CAL for him to be able to do this.
Another (more laborious) approach is to let him save to the network location, and have a developer check the new files into TFS periodically. If the docs aren't updated often this may be an acceptable compromise.
However, if you wish to copy the docs from the net during your build, you can use one of the MSBuild Copy commands (as you are already aware), or you can use Exec. The copy commands are more complicated to use because they often populated with filename lists that are generated from outputs of other build targets, and are usually used with solution-relative pathnames. But if you're happy with DOS commands (xcopy/robocopy), then you may find it much easier just to use Exec to run an xcopy/robocopy command. You can then "develop" and test the xcopy command outside the MSBuild environment and then just paste it into the MSBuild script with confidence that it will work - much easier than trialling copy settings as part of your full build process.
Exec is documented here. The example shows pretty well how to do what you want, but in your case you can probably just replace the Command attribute with the entire xcopy/robocopy command (or even the name of a batch file) you want to use, so you won't need to set up the ItemGroup etc.
We have installers referencing a wixlib file to get some common functionality. The wixlib is built in another solution then moved to a folder within that solution. When we try to build the installers with a TFS build, we get an error from light.exe:
light.exe: The system cannot find the file '..\..\..\Core\Common\assemblies\v1.0\Common.Wix.wixlib' with type 'Source'.
Our regular projects can reference \assembiles\v1.0, since we have some other common assemblies stored there. How do we get WiX to recognize this location during build?
You are referencing wixlib directly. So as far as I understand the TFS build process, it should be added to TFS project of your solution. TFS project shouldn't be dependent on the output of another non-dependent solution. It is at least bad practice. And in any case you can't guarantee this output would be generated before your project build on server.
As far as I remember, TFS build creates separate folder for each build and gets sources there. So your solutions are no longer on the same folder hierarchy level.
One more point in favor of explicitly copying wixlibs into your installer project: versioning - in this case any bugs made in the common library will not immediately break all projects that reference it. And you can gradually upgrade and test every project. Can you imagine auomatically downloading new version of any 3rd party dll on every build? Any change in that dll will immediately break your application even if changes are not critical to you.
Since the shared component and the active solution are in two separate projects in TFS, the workspace must be setup so that the relative paths for references remain intact. The easiest way to do this is to set your Build Agent Folder structure in Workspace in your TFS Build to have $(SourceDir) represent your root. However, don't change your Source Control Folder - that stays the same.
For example, say you have the following structure:
-TFS
|-SharedComponents
||-MyComponents
|-ProjectArea
||-MyProject
You would want to have the following two items in the build Workspace:
Source Control Folder Build Agent Folder
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$/ProjectArea/MyProject $(SourceDir)\ProjectArea\MyProject
$/SharedComponents/MyComponents $(SourceDir)\SharedComponents\MyComponents
This mimics the structure in TFS in your build folder, thus allowing all relative paths to remain intact.
One more note about this configuration: Since you have the shared components in another location, you may want to create a solution folder in MyProject and add the components that you are using to it. This will ensure they get pulled automatically when anyone loads your project from TFS - they won't have to go back and pull down the share components folder separately after discovering a build error.