Has anyone experienced TFS Build 2015 V.Next building their projects in a different order than they set in the sln? We have a project that uses an exe that is created and we have set in the solution to build in a specific order. However when the build runs online it builds in it's own order and the file doesn't exist yet. Obviously I might switch it to be in two solutions but I would rather not have to modify the sln because of a nuance in tfs 2015.
So it turns out that the solution didn't support multiple processors because it built a file that it used as a .exe in the build steps. So it built the .exe in another process and then built the other .dll in another process.
Run msbuild with the following argument to resolve the issue:
msbuild.exe /m:1 {SLN}
Related
I have a build definition in Visual Studio Team Services (a.k.a. Visual Studio Online? I'm not really sure the right name for it honestly) that is not producing an artifact, and I'm really not sure why. The main project in the solution file is a Windows service that is built using TopShelf. I suspect that maybe the MSBuild arguments in the Visual Studio Build task might be wrong. I copied them from a build definition for an MVC project that is working, but it occurs to me that they might not work for a Windows service.
Here they are:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true
/p:WebPublishMethod=Package
/p:PackageAsSingleFile=true
/p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true
/p:PackageLocation="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\"
I have a Copy Files task and a Publish Build Artifacts task later on in the process, but apparently the $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\ is empty. I get this warning:
##[warning]Directory 'd:\a\1\a' is empty. Nothing will be added to build artifact
Oddly enough, in another task in the process where I publish the symbols, everything appears to go off without a hitch.
One more bit: I'm using a hosted build agent. Not sure if that matters or not.
That's all of the pertinent information I can think to provide. Am I way off base here? I've used Octopus Deploy in the past and I know I had to install Octopack on my services. Do I need to do something similar here?
You don't need any of those MSbuild arguments; most of them apply to ASP .NET projects and will do nothing for a console application.
Replace them all with /p:OutDir=$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory). That will tell MSBuild to put the build outputs in the artifact staging directory.
For one of our build scripts (TFS 2013), when we run it manually or during Check-In (Continuous Integration trigger), the build script is not picking up the latest code changes. We looked in the logs and it does have the correct changeset number for the impacted files (in this case .vb files). We tried with several different .vb files. We also tried recreating the build script from scratch to no avail. We have several other build scripts for similar web applications that have no issues with the same build settings. This project builds fine. We set the Clean Build to True. Configurations is set to "Any CPU|Release". Output Location is set to SingleFolder. Build Template is set to TfvcTemplate.12.xaml. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
So, after a bit of kicking the tires we figured it out. We had the actual compiled .dll in this case checked into TFS. Hence, the build server would grab the old version that was checked in versus compiling the project on the fly. We removed the .dll from source control to resolve the issue.
I’ve been reading some articles (this one in particular: http://speaksql.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/a-journey-to-db-deployment-automaton-ssis-build-using-msbuild/) about using msbuild.exe to build and deploy an SSIS package (.ispac). I had no problem with that from my computer which has all the required assemblies, and only using the msbuild.exe command.
Once I tried to use the TFS Build Server I had some problems. First I realized that using a project with msbuild.exe (SSIS.MSBuild.proj) was not recommended with TFS 2013 since it was used with TFS 2008 and 2010. Anyway, I just wanted to make it work and it sounded plausible, but I had to use the TFSBuild.proj. That was not a problem, but my next problem was that the project I was being using (Microsoft SQL Server Community Samples: Integration Services) references a SQL Server assembly (Microsoft.SqlServer.ManagedDTS) which is not installed on my build server.
Then I realized that even if I managed to install that assembly on the gac, or referenced it on a relative path I would have a bigger problem next, I am using custom activities on my packages which I need to install using gacutil.exe on the host server, and I was wondering how to install, remotely, those dll.
That’s when I started to lose faith, and here I am, is there an “easy” way to implement continuous integration for SSIS packages without installing third party tools (http://remotegacutil.codeplex.com/ for example), and adding missing assemblies to the gac of a build server?
Did any of you have a similar issue? Did you solve it? How?
Thanks!
Use devenv.exe to build the ispac. Add an invoke process task and call out to devenv.
Add an Invoke Process to the Build Template, the one above shows a Sequence container, which assigns the path to the correct version of DeVenv to call, VS2010 /12 /13 etc. this is shown as hard coded but can be put into an argument, so it can be populated in individual build definitions. the one you can't see clearly is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.com"
Next is the invoke Process, this call out to the specified devenv.exe and passes arguments used to build the ISPAC file.
The arguments are passed in localProject would get you the actual project you wanted to build in previous versions, you may have to do something different for 2013, due to the changes to the new templates.
this gives a TFS2012 way of doing it, as i say you may have to do something different to get the project that you want to build under 2013, but the build will run and an .ISPAC file will be generated.
at this point i would deploy the ISPAC using powershell, you may want to add additional scripts to the powershell calls to handle creating the SSIS Catalog and scheduling of the job.
deploying with Powershell can be found here Deploying ISPAC's with Powershell
I've just setup a TFS (2012) server and now I'm trying to build the complete code (written in .NET 4.0 in VS 2010) via the TFS Build server. But in my solutions I have also a WCF RIA project which contains linked files because they are used somewhere else also and there is no possibility to add a reference to a general .NET binary in WCF/Silverlight.
Everything builds without any problem on my development machine but when I check it all in, create a standard build definition and run that build definition I get the following problem. The linked files have usings (UsingNamespace for example) to other projects that are also build by us and build before the WCF/Silverlight but the following error pops up while building through TFS Build server:
The type or namespace 'UsingNamespace' could not be found (are you
missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)'
Is there any solution for this problem that I looked over?
EDIT 1
Just tried to set the Copy to Output Directory propertie of the linked files to Copy Always but this still gives me the same error as I was expecting. The problem is that the linked file is placed somewhere that it can use the usings but the WCF RIA service cannot access/find that using.
EDIT 2
Just tried out my local test TFS where I can do what I want and there I made a build definition with just the solutions needed to make that the project with the linked files builds. This worked without any problem. Then I tried the same on our TFS server with a new build definition that has the same solutions as on my test TFS and here it did not work. The only difference that I know for sure is that my test TFS is TFS 2012 Update 1 and that my production TFS does not have the update 1 yet. I'll try to install it next week.
EDIT 3
I've just updated our production TFS to Update 1 but it is still not working with my temporary build definition which only contains the projects that are needed to build the silverlight application with the linked files. The 2 workspaces are the same on both server and the projects to build are also the same.
You need to specify the workspace information in the Build Definition for the build to use. The workspaces are what the build process copies from source control to the build server. If you don't have everything in the build server's workspace, it can't build properly.
The Source Control Folder in the workspace tab is the location of the files you need from TFS. The Build Agent Folder is a relative path from the build server's pre-defined base location. You'll usually use $(SourceDir)\Folder to specify the "Folder" that your build process needs.
This sounds like an $(Outdir) problem. A build definition in TFS automatically overrides the Bin folder. All Binaries are redirected to the bin folder upon compile. Sounds to me that you are using a mixture of project references and file references. The file references are probably what is causing your build failures.
Example if you compile in the same build the following solutions
Solution1.sln (TFS Build Pass)
project1.csproj
project2.csproj (references project 1)
Solution2.sln (TFS Build Failure)
project3.csproj (references binary output of project 1)
Expectations from TFS out of the box without customizing your workflow is that this simple build will fail. The reason is that in your development box all projects produce output to one destination while in a tfs build your projects will build to $(Outdir).
Some Things to try
Simple (best practice in my view)
Create 1 solution and use project references instead of file references.
Complex
Build using MSBuild project files
Modify your windows workflow to not override the $(Outdir)
Copy the binaries after a build is complete.
Best practice on Automating Builds
Build from command line
Build from cmd a NON vs2010 command line.
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe FullpathtoSolutionFile.sln
Cheers!
Apparently there was just missing the WCF RIA services V1.0 SP2 on the TFS server. If that was installed the problem was solved.
The packages created by a TFS 2010 Build only contain our Sources, not the binaries. When this is (automatically) deployed to IIS, the site does not run because it is missing DLLs that are created during the build process.
We have a Web Project created in VS2010. If I select "Build Deployment Package" from a right click in VS we get a zip file in the obj\Release\Package folder that contains the fully build site.
However, if ask our TFS build process to create the package by adding "/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=true /p:DeployOnBuild=true" to the MSBuild arguments (as advised in amongst other places here) we get an zip file in _PublishedWebsites\_Package\.zip that only contains the sources.
My best guess is that the CopyAllFilesToSingleFolderForPackage is picking up the files from the wrong place.
I notice a similar issue asked here - TFS 2010 and creating a package - although his workaround in not appropriate in many cases, I'd guess.
My concern is that this is using a built-in, but poorly documented feature of MSBuild/TFS so when it doesn't work you're a little in the wilderness.
It seems that deployOnBuild runs some "package"-like target on each of the projects. If you have built the projects into a separate directory (which the default TFS 2010 build does by default) the packaging won't pick up the compiled files.
One solution is to get rid of the custom output folder for the MSBuild Command within the TFS build workflow. This will cause the compiled files to be located in-situ and be included in the package.
Now the rest of the TFS workflow is require some changes because it'll be expecting to transfer the files from the output directory, and they won't be there.