I have a release definition setup with several tasks. When a developer wants to create a release from this definition, i'd like to give them the option of selecting which features they'd like to release (turn on/off tasks). Ideally this would be via the Create Release dialog using a variable or similar.
Can this be done? Or is the only way to achieve this to create a draft release and enable/disable the tasks on each environment? Believe this is prone to error (toggle task on one environment but forget to on another) and this is not an option as administrator has locked editing of definitions (prevent incorrect setup of production releases).
Understand I can create separate release definitions to cover the options but it seems like a lot of duplication.
Unfortunately, this is not supported in TFS currently. The workarounds are just like you mentioned above, to disable and enable those steps or use draft release.
This is a user voice about your request you could vote:
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/330519-team-services/suggestions/19165690-select-steps-when-create-release
Related
In TFS it is possible to set the trigger of a build definition to a specific branch (e.g. master). It is also possible to use patterns like so features/* in order to execute the build whenever there was a push to a branch underneath features/.
This already worked for me. In my use case now I want to trigger the build whenever there was a push to a branch with a specific version number in it.
E.g. Bugs/BUG1234/BUG1234_v1.2
I already tried things like **/*_v1.2, but it didn't work.
Did I miss something, or is it just not possible?
It's not possible for now, CI filter does not support such complex patterns. Please see Continuous integration (CI)-Filters for details.
As a workaround you can add multiple filters with the paths wich include the specific version number in it.
E.g.:
Include Bugs/BUG1234/BUG1234_v1.2
Include Bugs/BUG5678/BUG5678_v1.2
Include Bugs/BUG910/BUG910_v1.2
However the requirement makes sense, I have submitted a user voice here for you to suggest the feature. You can go and vote it up to push the Dev team to achieve that in future.
In our organization we use TFS 2018 and Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.
As far as I got until now, there is a way "client-side", configuring from Visual Studio, selecting Team\Team Project Settings\Source Control\Check-in Policy\Code Analysis and I should the custom ruleset defined.
I need two things:
Set a custom guideline that is mix of both default Microsoft ones and other tools' guidelines, like Roslynator or StyleCop.
Create a custom policy server side in order to prevent check-in from Visual Studio (or whatever client we can think of) if code is not compliant to those guidelines.
For the first point, I'll make a clear simple example.
There are the guidelines embedded in Visual Studio.
But they are not complete and I would like to extend them, taking stuff here and there or defining new ones from scratch.
I want to use e.g.:
CA1500: Variable names should not match field names (from default Visual Studio Managed Binary Analysis)
RCS1145: Remove redundant 'as' operator (from Roslynator)
RCS1204 Use EventArgs.Empty (from Roslynator)
SA1302: InterfaceNamesMustBeginWithI (from StyleCop)
SA1305: FieldNamesMustNotUseHungarianNotation (from StyleCop)
How can I do it? And can i do it without make me define it at project level (like incorporating stylecop file for every .csprj) but more at least at solution or Team Project level?
For the second point, I already defined the compulsory comment and compulsory work item attached.
And I can even define new policies, it's true, but they can all be overridden client side.
Is it possible to prevent that?
The best solution for this is two part:
Educate your users to configure the right policies and editor settings. Creating custom project templates and distributing those can help (or deploying a custom build target onto the machine which enforces good defaults.. Having a good local policy will help people do the right thing and people who are supported to do the right thing will likely not try to get around that.
Setup a CI build for your projects. VSTS and TFS have a nice feature which will run a build whenever code is changed. You can even set it up as a Gated Checkin build which will check the sources before they're checked in. This check happens on the server and is much harder to by-pass. You can also configure the build to always override the code analysis settings, even if they're not configured in the project. My MsBuild Helper tasks will help you setup the right MsBuild properties to do that.
As to your more specific questions:
You cannot setup Code Analysis Rules at the Team Project level without also configuring the ruleset for all Visual Studio Projects. Otherwise the checkin policy will cause the check-in to fail, but the developer will then still have to update all projects in the solution with the right ruleset.
You cannot prevent people from by-passing the local check-in policy. The best you can do is to use Reporting Services and Alerts to detect the breach of policy and take corrective action.
You could add the Rule Set into TFS source control and then select it from Code Analysis Policy Editor. Check the screenshot below:
Check-in policy is already applied to a team project, not a single project.
To edit check-in policy, you must have the Edit project-level information permission. You could deny this permission for the users to prevent them from editing the check-in policy.
In tfs when automatic release occurs (each night) my team have to change their backlogitems asociated with this build to an state called 'ready for qa' next day, sometimes we forget it, if the build mark those backlogitems as 'ready for qa' when it's success it would be great. Is there a way to configure the automatic release to do that?
I don't believe there is any native way to do this, but the following extension Update Work Item in the VSTS marketplace should work for you.
After installing the extension, you will need to add a task to your Release Definition and configure it to suit your needs. Be sure to enable the "Allow Scripts to Access OAuth Token" setting in your release.
Note: there are some nuances in configuring this task to be sure to read all of the 'help' icons during initial configuration
Personally, I found using TFS Rest API as a good way of updating Work items. The Work items update TFS API is quite simple and easy to use
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/integrate/api/wit/updates
The advantage of using it over build task is that you can run and test it locally and is easier to update and maintain
My team is just now starting to use TFS 2015 Update 1 on premise to manage their development process. I have set up the server and defined some custom states and transitions for work items to better map to our process. To start with, we will only be taking advantage of the Kanban board and are not attempting to use iterations for a variety of reasons I won't get into here.
My problem currently is using TFS to plan releases. Specifically, I don't see any way to group Features and User Stories into a specific release. All of my googling has turned up many articles involving Microsoft Release Management, so I installed and configured it, but it is absolutely overkill for what my team is trying to do right now. I'm not trying to automate deployments to different environments at the moment, I just need a way to group work items into a something that encapsulates the concept of a release in TFS. Is there no way to do this? The best I can come up with right now is to further modify the work item templates to either provide a simple "Release" field with a pick list, or define another type of work item that I can group the others into. This seems like a glaring oversight by MS from my perspective, so I'm hoping I'm just missing something.
Grouping work into releases can be done in a couple of ways, just remember that the concept of a "Release Plan" doesn't explicitly exist in TFS. Release management covers the "Release to Production", but doesn't cover any planning.
Ways to plan releases:
One way is to create a Release Iteration, this works when you're not working on multiple releases in parallel and truly finish one release before working on the next. The Release iteration used to be default, but has been removed from the product in favor of teams delivering sprints and teams doing continuous delivery.
Project Root
+ Release 1.2
+ Sprint 1
+ Sprint 2
Another option is to use Tags. You could tag work items with a tag that signifies it's targeted for a specific sprint.
Use a Marker workitem, on the backlog place one work item which clearly stands out ### END OF RELEASE 1 ### Any workitem below it is not part of that release. This technique fits a more agile way of working and more clearly shows that the contents of a release are a floating thing.
Create a custom Release Workitem, link your other workitems to this work item to target it for that release.
And your option to create a picklist on a *Custom workitem field** is another option.
Alternatively you could also use the Area Path in much the same way as Iteration Path. By using the Area Path you have the benefit of not having a sprint tied to one specific release.
It is not the best solution but could be the solution in some cases.
Answering solely based on your question around planning releases, then:
Create a custom work item template, called 'Deployment'.
When planning of a release begins, create a new 'Deployment', let's say, called 'MyProduct v1.1'.
In your planning meeting, create Features and User Stories appropriately, and create a relation to the 'MyProduct v1.1' Deployment, by opening the User Story and adding a Link (using the Deployment Work Item number) as 'Related'.
To monitor Deployments, create a custom Work Item query targeting the new 'Deployment' Work Item template. You can configure this to display on your dashboard.
Follow whatever release procedure you like based on the 'Deployment' and its' relations.
You should follow a naming convention when creating 'Deployments' for consistency.
p.s. I recommend using the extension 'Work Item Visualization' in this instance. It'll nicely map out the 'Deployment' related Work Items.
If you want to use TFS to actually build an and create a Release, then Release Manager is worth considering.
TFS 2015 Update 2.1 now includes a built-in version of Release Manager. It's much more user-friendly and simple to configure when compared to Release Manager standalone installations.
To group work items into a 'release', you can do the following:
Create a build definition for the repository you're working with - see Build Def creation docs
Create a Release definition - see Release Def creation docs
Once you have these definitions created, the working process would be:
Developers work against work items
Commits are made against the WI number (or tasks)
When it's time to create a release, start a build on the definition you created. In doing so, WIs will then be associated with a Build Number.
When the build succeeds, start a new Release from the definition you created.
You have have a set of work items associated with a release, see screenshot:
Note: You can enable CI builds and releases, although the above is based on manual triggers.
You can also directly call the Release API to locate WIs associated with Releases, however you'll need to obtain the actual Id of the release first.
You are currently limited however to viewing these relationships based on knowing the Release. In a real world scenario, it's more realistic to look at a Work Item to see when it was release. To do that, there's no built-in functionality at present, however my own-answered question will guide you - see here.
Additional to the methods explained by jessehouwing there exists also several 3rd party tools which can integrate with TFS/VSTS and provide advanced planning features. See VSTS Marketplace for an overview.
Our team is sharing a Jenkins server with other teams, and this currently means that we are sharing the same OS-level build-user account. The different teams' OS-level build-user settings (Maven settings, bash settings, user-level Ant libraries, etc...) have collided a few times--"fixing" the settings for one team's jobs inadvertently "breaks" another team's jobs. The easiest sol'n that occurs to me is giving each team its own OS-level build-user account with which to execute its Jenkins jobs--but I cannot find a way to do this.
I have checked with Google, and also here
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Use+Jenkins
and here
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Plugins
to no avail.
Is there a way to do this? If not, can you recommend any best practices for segregating sets of builds from one another?
Maven Specific
You have two options that come to mind,
Add additional installations of Maven into your Jenkins global configuration, each using their own Home directory, and thus settings files. This will allow you to use totally different version of Maven, and selected based on Job requirements (You are given the option to select which "version" of maven you wish to use on the job itself.
Similar to (1), but specify specific settings configurations using Maven command line arguments. Its a little less "obvious" but may be quicker to implement
Multi-slave
You could possibly make use of multiple slaves on each machine. It increases the overheads of the builds quite significantly, and the implementation is such that you'd have multiple user accounts on a machine, each setup as needed, and then one slave instance for each user.
I'm not sure these solutions will totally answer your problem, I'll have a think and see if anything else pops into mind, but it might give some starting points
Key builds to a specific team directory that contains that team's settings. For example, provide a parameter 'TEAM' to every build, set its default value to the appropriate team name, and use that parameter as a key to a directory that contains the team's settings (so instead of using ${HOME} as in what you want to do, you'll use something like ${TEAM_SETTINGS}/${TEAM}).
You can set per-job users (who has access to/can build a particular job).
Under "Manage Jenkins" > "Configure System" >
Click on Enable Security
Check Project-based Matrix Authorization Strategy
However, I do not think there is a "per-build" option for a single job.
If you have the same project that you are sharing between teams, you could (and probably should) create two jobs for this project, and have different libraries/scripts be used in each.
You could also parametrize the build (On the Job Page, "Configure" > This build is parametrized) and supply the library versions, etc via string parameters.
You could also use a parameter to be the team's name, and in your build script change libraries based on the parameter:
For example, have a parameter called "TEAM", with choices: TEAM_A and TEAM_B, and in your script, have
if [ $TEAM == "TEAM_A" ]
then
ANT_HOME=/opt/ant/libA
else
ANT_HOME=/opt/ant/libB
fi
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Have you considered sourcing your settings? In Linux, you could do this by saving your OS settings in a script file (for example paths, etc), and using source /path/to/settings/file, in Windows it would be call /path/to/settings/batch/file.
Can you give examples of OS level settings that you would require and per-build user for?
You problem is a common one.
Whenever something nonstandard is installed on a build server, something will break for someone.
The only solutions I know are
Set up a separate build slave for each team or product. Then they can install whatever they want on the build slave and any mess they create is all their own fault.
Any dependencies required by a job need to come with the job. This is my preferred way of working. For example: If a job needs a library or a tool, the library or tool is not installed on the build server but in the source tree and the build uses it from the source tree.
Sometimes the latter way is more work. You need to set up the tools or library so it works when it is installed in the source tree. Some tools have hard-coded paths and they do not work. In that case you can install the source of the tool and compile the tool during the build.
An even better solution is to set up separate Jenkins jobs for all the tools and libraries and the jobs that need a library or tool will download them from the Jenkins jobs.
This way you can control all your dependencies and different jobs do not conflict when e.g. one needs an older version of a library and one a newer version. And if someone upgrades the library, it is immediately visible in the version control who did what.