I am very new to Jenkins and sort of new to build .net application, but the guy left team so I have been assigned to do this. I have read tons of articles online about setting up Jenkins master, but little about slave configuration. The guy created a new slave and connect with Jenkins master successfully before he left. And he told me that slave is responsible for 1) downloading source code from TFS server and 2) building them.
now my issue is what do I need to install in the slave machine( windows system) to be able to perform that two tasks?
1) for downloading source code, do I need to install TFS client on slave ?
2) for building source code, do I need to install MSbuild or entire Visual studio ?
Thank you very much !
Assuming you installed a recent version of the Team Foundation Server Plugin, then no TFS Client is required (see https://github.com/jenkinsci/tfs-plugin#400-and-later-new).
Depending on what you are building, installing Visual Studio maybe required or not. In my experience, only a limited set of project types build with just MSBuild and without Visual Studio. There are hacks or supported tips but they work only in specific cases: YMMV.
The new Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 RC are making this requirement a thing of the past: if you can migrate your code to Visual Studio 2017 you will be able to use them.
I'm setting up a new build server using TFS 2015 and after I configured the agent, when I tried to queue a build I got this error:
No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild, visualstudio, vstest
How can this be resolved?
Install Visual Studio on your build agent, then restart the build agent. Restarting the build agent will capture the added Capabilities.
Note: First of all, you can do all this with the community edition and TFS Express 2015 on your own server (for free up to five users) - so don't worry about needing to use the Visual Studio online version or paying for Visual Studio Professional.
It is very easy to misinterpret the error message provided and go off on a wild-goose chase trying to debug it.
Unfortunately the message itself is just badly worded and that's the real problem.
Here is what that error message really means:
"No agent could be found with the following capabilities: msbuild,
visualstudio, vstest.
In fact I didn't actually find ANY build agents configured for the selected build queue."
So you're thinking that doesn't apply to you because you just created a build agent?
Well, maybe you did, but here's what probably happened:
You created a new pool (for no reason other than you just thought you ought to).
You then created a queue under that pool.
You ran the PowerShell script to create an agent and you assumed it put it in the pool you just created....
But it didn't - it put it in the 'default' pool which you aren't even using...
Aha!
So here's what happens when you build:
You select a queue from the dropdown.
TFS tries to build by looking for the pool that corresponds to that queue and it doesn't find any agents AT ALL there, so you get a stupid useless red-herring error message.
When I finally realized what happened I just deleted my cutely named pool + queue and just reverted to using the default pool.
Next time I will try to pay more attention to this message during the PowerShell configuration:
Configure this agent against which agent pool? (default pool name is
'default')
You will have to create a queue under the pool, but then your agent should start working.
If you have a genuine with a certain capability being absent from your agent you can check what your agent supports via the 'capabilities' tab shown here. Of course msbuild, visualstudio and vstest are all here :-)
In my case, after installing MSBuild (https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/, search for "Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017"), I just had to add the path to MSBuild to the PATH environment variable. The agent wasn't detecting MSBuild until I did that.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin
I did NOT have to install the full Visual Studio IDE. The selected answer for this question is just plain wrong...
By default, when using the new build system on VSO, it doesn't pick the hosted build option, which is how I ended up on this post in Stack Overflow. If you are used to using a VSO build server here's what you need to do:
Create a hosted build by going to the General tab and changing your Default Queue to hosted. More on the restrictions of that and how it works here: https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/build/hosted-agent-pool
Add them as User-defined capabilities, e.g.:
visualstudio C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community
vstest C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow
I had initially installed the agent on a machine that did not have Visual Studio installed. However, after installing Visual Studio (and then Visual Studio Build Tools), restarting/recreating my agent, restarting my machine, etc., I could not get the agent to detect the new capabilities automatically, so I added them myself in Azure DevOps as User-defined capabilities.
I had this issue and it turned out being my release process had selected the "wrong" agent. Just edit the release and set the correct agent queue
I was using a Xcode build slave for building an Xcode project.
And the error message I ended up with in TFS 2015 was
"No agent could be found with the following capabilities: xcode"
I registered an OS X on-premise build slave.
In the "Register Agent" step, I named by build agent:
>> Register Agent:
Enter agent pool (press enter for default) > My-Xcode-Agent-Pool
So, I had to select the "My-Xcode-Agent-Pool" as Default queue in the build settings. Source: Microsoft-hosted agents
Although none of previous answers worked for me, the post by Simon_Weaver pointed me in the right direction.
He mentioned that vstest was in his list, but it wasn't in mine. I fixed it by adding a user-defined capability named "vstest" with the full path to vstest.console.exe under Visual Studio 2017.
What ended up working for me was to go to where I downloaded the agent and running:
./config.cmd remove then ./config.cmd to reinstall the agent from the command line inside the directory of my agent.
Download agent
per microsoft https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb399135(v=vs.94)
You must install on the build agent the version of Visual Studio that your team uses on its dev machines. See Installing Visual Studio. You must also install any other software and components that are installed on your dev machines and that are required to build your app.
In my case, after installing MSBuild, restart all Azure services (in windows service) and it worked. No need to install full Visual Studio
You have to install the correspondent Visual Studio version on the build machine (where you have installed your agent). This will add the required tools and capabilities to the server.
Visual Studio is required, because it installs all the build targets required to build your projects.
After being installed, you have to restart the agent Windows service so that it refreshes the list of capabilities.
Since you are using the Visual Studio installation on the build machine to build, that installation doesn't count as an additional license.
General solution for TFS:
The common way of resolving most of the issues on the build server is to install Visual Studio & all dependent packages on your build server.
Alternative solution in case of using VSTS
When you choose where to build, use "Hosted"
and then the build will work.
The guide how to make it work may be found here: Deploy an agent on Windows for TFS 2015
Check the agent section which will contain information about capabilities.
Updated:
Once you have the list of capabilities in vsts(azuredevops)
you might need to install the desired software on your build agent machine.
PS Be aware, you might have to license your sw, if required.
I am trying to get the most basic configuration of TFS 2012 up and running.
So far I installed the TFS server using the simplest option (the 1st option in the installer - the one that comes with a bundled SQL express),
I configured the build service (1 controller, 1 agent, both on the TFS machine).
My project consists of 2 parts: a C#/silverlight part, and a C++ part.
After adding the silverlight prerequisites the C# project builds correctly.
However I can't get the C++ project to build.
I guess I am missing a prerequisite since I am getting the following errors:
C:\Builds\1\proj1\Client\src\Code\Client\proj\main (VC11).vcxproj
(19): The imported project "C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\v110\Microsoft.Cpp.Default.props" was
not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is
correct, and that the file exists on disk.
Indeed, the TFS server does not have a "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp" folder (while my dev machine has one).
I installed the windows SDK, but that didn't help.
I saw on some posts that I need to install VS 2012 on the build machine. Is that correct? will VS express do?
I have been banging my head on this for the last 2 days, and any help would be appreciated.
Installing Visual Studio on your build server seems like a strange thing to do, but having been around the TFS block a bit, I have found it to be the simplest way to manage build servers.
You can copy the files manually from your dev machine to your build server, but if an update to visual studio comes out, you will need to figure out what has changed and make sure you update all those files too. These files typically include Targets files and associated dlls.
Also with all the extensions and packages that are available now, it is just easier to load Visual Studio on your build server and install the required packages than try to work out what is needed to replicate the functionality.
This was made very clear to me recently when Microsoft released ASP.Net and Web Tools 2012.2. This altered the publishing pipeline for Web Sites and Web Projects and I needed to use this in my TFS build. It was so much easier to just be able to log onto my build server, load Visual Studio and download the new update.
I would definitely support installing Visual Studio on your build server.
I'm trying to get our TFS server to build a solution with an azure project. To get up to speed fast, I installed the azure SDK 1.6 on the build server/agent. I only needs to build and not publish the project for the moment. But I get the error below.
The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Windows Azure Tools\1.6\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
Both the development machine and the build agent is x64, but on the development machine the azure stuff was installed in to "programfiles (x86).
Now I really need an advice on how to get the build agent to build the project, do I really need to include some dll's in the project, or how do I best fix this?
Up and running. A quick and dirty installation of the azure sdk and azure tools for visual studio did the trick.
I am trying to build a project using TFS2010 Build.TFS resides on its own server, and i am trying to build to a directory on the same machine. The Server does not have VS2010 installed on it.
When the build runs it fails and gives me this error:
c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets (1558): Task failed because "AxImp.exe" was not found, or the correct Microsoft Windows SDK is not installed. The task is looking for "AxImp.exe" in the "bin" subdirectory beneath the location specified in the InstallationFolder value of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A. You may be able to solve the problem by doing one of the following: 1) Install the Microsoft Windows SDK. 2) Install Visual Studio 2010. 3) Manually set the above registry key to the correct location. 4) Pass the correct location into the "ToolPath" parameter of the task.
Then I get a whole bunch of errors saying the namespaces of the project I am building cannot be found. I am not sure if that is all linked to the above mentioned error however.
Thank You!
It is recommended to have Visual Studio 2010 installed on your build machine but it is not a requirement. Since the error message indicates that it didn't find AxImp.exe, can you verify if this file exists on the build machine? The location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin (if you're on a 64-bit Windows).
If the file doesn't exist, installing .NET Framework SDK will probably help to resolve that specific error.
Regarding installing Visual Studio on the build machine, Visual Studio is licensed per user, not per machine, so as long as the build machine owner is licensed, you should not need extra license for Visual Studio. But you probably should look at the licensing papers for your edition of Visual Studio 2010 to make sure.
Here's a table in the white paper on licensing:
You need to have the same software running on the build server as you would if building locally. This means you need Visual Studio 2010, and possibly even the same edition of Visual Studio 2010, depending on what you're trying to build.
IMPORTANT REMINDER: Visual Studio is licensed PER USER. This means that as long as you as a user have a license, you can use that SAME LICENSE on your build Machine.
The only "problem" would be if you actually had "No licenses" - meaning you do not own a copy of Visual Studio at all, but have a legal copy of TFS.