I am trying to setup Jenkins to automate a build. We have one enormous repository with approximately 100 solution files. To build this repository we have a build program which finds all the solutions and builds in a specified order.
I would like to change that to use Jenkins. Is there a way to setup msbuild and specify a build order for all of these solution files?
p.s. I am trying to avoid creating one mammoth solution file which contains all of the projects.
If in fact all of your projects use ProjectReferences to other VS projects, you should be able to use MSBuild to extract all those references via the ResolveProjectReferences MSBuild task. You can then build an MSBuild script build those dependent projects in order. There's a pretty good example of this here. The example given there goes so far as constructing a specialized MSBuild task that builds a dependency graph, which I must say is pretty cool.
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We are migrating 50+ .net project from TFS to GitHub, at the same, we want to use Jenkins to automate the build. Currently all the builds are done inside the Visual Studio manually. I know how to automate this build using MSBuild and we already have a lot of these projects building inside Jenkins.
My question: is there a way to set up these 50+ project quickly w/o creating them one by one manually? Anyway to script them? e.g. a Jenkins project has everything inside a folder, I can copy a sample project/folder to create a new one and modify something. Or create a Jenkins project using a script reading a config file? Any idea can save some time is appreciated.
Not a direct answer but too long for a comment so here it goes anyway. Following the Joel test (which in no way is dogmatic for me but does make a lot of good points), and in my experience, you should already have an msbuild file now to build all those projects 'in one click'. Then, setting up a build server, in fact any build server, is just a matter of making it build that single parent project. This might not work for everyone, but for several projects I've worked on this had the following advantages:
the entire build process gets defined by developpers, working locally on their machine, using 'standard' tools
as such they don't need to spend hours in a web interface figuring out the appropriate build steps, dependencies and whatnot (also those hours would have been worthless in the end if switching to a different build server)
since a complete build is now just a matter of msbuild master.proj, possibly along with some options to define configuration/platform/output directories getting this running on any build server should be painless and quick
in the same manner this makes it easy to test different build servers with a minimum of time and migrate between them (also no need to ask SO questions on how to set everything up :)
this also makes it easy for other developpers to get complete builds as well without having to go round via a build server
Anecdote: we once had Jenkins running on multiple different projects as well. It took us days to get everything running, with the templates etc, and we found the web intercae slow and cumbersome (and getting to know the API would have taken even more days). Then one day I got sick of this and made a bunch of msbuild scripts which could build everything from one msbuild command. That took much less time than setting up Jenkins, a couple of hours or so. Then I took a TeamCity installation we already had and made it build the new master project. Took like an hour and everything worked. Just recently I took the same project and got it working on Visual Studio Online, again in no time.
If those projects are more or less similar to build, you will probably be interested in using the template plug-in for jenkins. There you configure a dummy project such that it does what is common to (most of) the 50+ projects.
Afterwards you create a separate project for each: Create the first project and make it use the template project for each of the steps which can be shared with the template project (use build step from other project). All subsequent projects can be created as slightly adopted copy of this first 'real' project.
I use it such that the variable $JOB_NAME (the actual project name in jenkins that is) is part of the repository path and I can thus clone from http://example.org/$JOB_NAME/
Configured that way, I can include the source code management step in the templating job and use it unmodified. Similar with the build step and post-build step: they are run by a script which is somewhat universal accross all my projects (mostly calling make and guessing deployment / publication paths upon $JOB_NAME again).
We are using TeamCity 9.x as are main CI server. I'm looking for ways to run a script (PowerShell, Python, ...) when a build is tagged. Is this possible?
The only thing I can think of is to write a simple service which polls the REST API for the last x builds and reads the <tag/> information.
We are using TFS for source control, so labeling the sources is not an option (because a label is unique in TFS).
Are there any other (simpler) ways to do this? Or is there any other way to define build quality and execute something?
Yes you can
In the build trigger definition, you can mention specific subset of tags(using regex patterns) on which teamcity targets are trigeered. In your case, you have to set the triggers to run on tags only
I know this doesn't answer your question but figured I'd mention it anyways since you have TFS in your environment already.
If you were using TFS Build it has a drop down on each build to indicate quality. And there's a free tool called TFS Deployer that allows you to run scripts when the quality is changed.
Ok so I have to admit, I'm very new to all of this build automation stuff. But basically what I'm wondering is if there is a way to wire up my build definitions in such a way that if I have a case like so
ProjectA produces ComponentA.dll
ProjectB references ComponentA.dll and produces ComponentB.dll
ProjectC references ComponentB.dll
then when I make changes to ProjectA and check them in, the build process would automatically also build ProjectB, and finally ProjectC, and report any errors.
So is there a way to accomplish this, or should this type of thing be handled somehow completely differently in the first place?
The process you are referring to is the crux of the practice known as Continuous Integration.
TFS does it very well: simply set your build definition Trigger to Continuous Integration and set the Workspace working folder to the parent folder of the three projects. This way, any change in one of the projects will trigger a build.
MSDN: Build and Deploy Continuously
You can use a visual studio solution and use project references between the projects. Then build the solution on your build server.
Having real problems creating artifacts in teamcity 6.5 (using TFS & MSBuild as the buildrunner if it makes any odds, which it probably does as any examples I find seem to use SVN...).
The Build works, so long as I enter no checkout rules.
If I understand it, I'll need to set up some artifacts, that themselves rely on checkout rules(?).
I have two builds that are identical other than the way they are kicked off.
One is initiated on check-in
One is initiated manually from within TC. This build is the Test Build
Assembly version numbers come from a single versioninfo.cs file that is a linked file in all projects in the solution. This method is detailed here : http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/328977/The-Right-Way-to-Version-Your-Assemblies and holds the version number thus:
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("9.1.0.0")]
Ultimately, I'm unable to copy the output of the test build to another location.
As it stands, the only output of a build is in the teamcity data directory, for example :
C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\ceaaf65dc87ff856\Project1\bin\Debug
C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\work\ceaaf65dc87ff856\Project2\bin\Debug
etc
I'd like to copy the output files (exes and DLLs) to an output folder which has the build number of the build on it
For arguments sake, lets say for the version number above, this would be to
c:\BuildServer_Output\SolutionName\9.1.0.0
Currently I have not been able to create artifact paths that actually do anything - i.e. to copy anything anywhere.
For instance I have acoupe of artifact paths, but nothing ever gets put into C:\BuildServer_TestBuilds -
+:Accounts\bin\debug* => C:\BuildServer_TestBuilds
+:BackOffice\bin\debug* => C:\BuildServer_TestBuilds
Am I getting no artifacts (and my artifact paths therefore ignored) because I have no checkout rules?
Any help would be appreciated.
I am pretty sure artifacts and checkout rules are completely independent. Artifacts just deal with what has been built. Checkout rules tell teamcity how to react to and checkout changes in the VCS.
It looks like your artifact paths are beginning with absolute paths. I have always found it easier to use relative paths with wildcards. That way I don't need to worry about where teamcity put the build. We use the following to get all dlls and exes to one folder
**\bin\Debug\*.*=>deploymentdir
Our build configuration page has an artifacts link and when we open it it will have things like
deploymentdir\common\bin\debug\common.dll
deploymentdir\common\bin\debug\common.pdb
deploymentdir\runner\bin\debug\runner.exe
In one of our other builds we use an msbuild script to flatten our output before putting it through the artifact process.
We do use checkout rules but we have not had to change our artifact paths to accommodate them.
I am playing with TFS 2010, and am trying to setup a build process that will have some custom steps.
These include things like, stopping/starting IIS, search and replace files etc... across environments.
I have tried to look for examples online and have not found anything clear and meaningful on how to just run a script or something over the source files. Looking at the default build process template (DefaultTemplate.xml) I cant make much sense of it.
How do I go about doing this ?
For info on customising the TFS2010 workflow build templates have a look at Ewald Hoffman's series. Start with Part 1 (archived here).
I should also mention that since it looks like you're doing deployment then you may want to break deployment automation away from build automation.
This is almost exactly what I'd say for this question (Split build and deplyment stages, investigate TFSDeployer). One additional element is more generic - for deployment tasks you can't find an easy integrated tool you should create a custom deployment script. You can call any script by adding an "InvokeProcess" step in your Build workflow. TFSDeployer also has locations where you can insert custom PowerShell Scripts. (If you don't like PowerShell you can have PowerShell or "InvokeProcess" call a different script engine.)