I couldn't find definitive answer: What is the difference in TFS2013 betwenn Clean workspace True/False and Clean build True/False. It's not easy to catch the build server while working and see really what's happening. I think that the difference is that clean workapce will delete the src directory, while the clean build will delete the bin/tst dirs.
If it so - I can't understand why is there need to delete the src directory though. It seems that the cleanst way to do build requires only to clean the work tree (along with bin/tst) and get latest above it, and not deleting it and get all the sources again.
If so - how can I perform this type of cleaning? Or I understood it wrong?
The background is that we have heavy sources (>1GB) and not very good network between the tfs server and the build server. We would glad to cut it off, but also clean the src tree before the build.
For "Clean Workspace" setting, there are three options. And this setting is used to set whether to delete source/output folders in the build agent working directly. (by default is: $(SystemDrive)\Builds\$(BuildAgentId)\$(BuildDefinitionPath))
All: delete all existing outputs and sources and do a full rebuild;
Outputs: to delete all existing outputs but get only those source files that have changed since the last build (Incremental Get);
None: to leave existing outputs and sources in place and build any changes incrementally.
However, I can't find Clean Build (True|False) setting, do you mean delete builds or Retention Policy?
For your scenario, you need to set "Clean Workspace" to be "Output", then the output folder is deleted but still have source folder.
Related
I wonder if it is possible to remove only one build (including artifacts) from job workspace.
I tried to "Delete Build" in Build History but all it does is remove build reference from Build History table. I know I can ssh to a server and delete files from the command line but I am looking for a way to do it from Jenkins web interface.
After installing Workspace Cleanup Plugin I am able to wipe out current workspace but I want to keep my other builds in the workspace.
In your Jenkins instance, to be able to have folder/per build - set flag "Use custom workspace" in your job's settings. Here is a brief help info from the setting description:
For each job on Jenkins, Jenkins allocates a unique "workspace directory."
This is the directory where the code is checked out and builds happen.
Normally you should let Jenkins allocate and clean up workspace directories,
but in several situations this is problematic, and in such case, this option
lets you specify the workspace location manually.
One such situation is where paths are hard-coded and the code needs to be
built on a specific location. While there's no doubt that such a build is
not ideal, this option allows you to get going in such a situation.
...
And your custom directory path would look like this:
workspace\$JOB_NAME\$BUILD_NUMBER ~> workspace\my-job-name\123
where $JOB_NAME will be "my-job-name" and $BUILD_NUMBER is the build number, eq. "123".
There is one nasty problem with this approach and this is why I wouldn't recommend to use it - Jenkins will not be able to reclaim disk space for outdated builds. You would have to handle cleanup of outdated builds manually and it is a lot of hassle.
Alternative approach, that gives you more control, tools and is able to keep disk space usage under control (without your supervision) is to use default workspace settings and archive your build output (files, original source code, libraries and etc.) as a post-build action. Very-very handy and gives you access to a whole bunch of great tools like, Copy Artifact Plugin or ArtifactDeployer Plugin in other jobs.
Hope that info helps you make a decision that fits your needs best.
I also use "General/Advanced/Use custom workspace" (as in #pabloduo's answer) on a Windows machine with something like:
C:\${JOB_NAME}\${BUILD_NUMBER}
Just wanted to add a solution for getting rid of the build job's workspaces.
I use Groovy Events Listener Plugin for this.
Using the plug-in's standard configuration I just use the following Groovy script:
if (event == Event.JOB_DELETED){
new File(env.WORKSPACE).deleteDir()
}
And now the custom workspace is deleted when the build job is deleted.
Just be aware that this would also delete non-custom workspaces (because the event is triggered for all jobs on your Jenkins server).
According to many different SO-questions, it should be possible to exclude files being copied/deployed using the Task "Copy and Publish Build Artifacts" in the new TFS build system.
However it doesn't work for me (it is not excluding anything). What could I be doing wrong:
This should work (I know the question is old but I needed an answer myself)
**\!(System.Windows.Interactivity.resources.dll|*.dll.config|*fluentassertions*)
This is a known issue of the build task “Copy and Publish Build Artifacts”,bitbonk.
Q: This step didn't produce the outcome I was expecting. How can I fix it?
This step has a couple of known issues:
Some minimatch patterns don't work.
It eliminates the most common root path for all paths matched.
Source Link: Utility: Copy and Publish Build Artifacts
Well, it's nothing business with your settings of minimatch. It's just not work for that build task. Certainly, you can also doulbe check your minimatch with Copy Files task to verify this.
For now, you can avoid these issues by instead using the Copy Files step and the Publish Build Artifacts step.
Note: If it's still not working on copy files step, you should pay attention to the architecture of file when using minimatch. There must be something wrong on it.
The task copies the files base on the contents you entered one line by one line and the "!" only exclude the files during the copy, it does not delete the files that already been copied. So with the "**\*" you entered in the first line, all the files have already been copied and published. You need to remove the first line in "Contents". And for the excluded files, if there are in the same folded, you need to exclude them in one line. For example: using
!?(1.txt|2.txt)
to exclude both 1.txt and 2.txt file instead of using
!1.txt
!2.txt
When I create a build definition I have setup some source settings, example below:
Problem is I want it to trigger a build when someone checks into the Builds or Install folders, but the Includes folder is just some libraries and other items it needs. I don't want it to re-run when these libraries are changed. However I need to set them up here to make sure they are copied across to the Build drop server. Is there a way to copy across this Includes folder without forcing a build trigger when someone checks in to this folder?
There are 2 things to do to approach this.
First you need to get your source folders into a build centric layout, this will help to eliminate as much overlapping as possible.
If you need a particular shared folder that shouldn't trigger a build, then don't include it in the source mappings, instead add a script to download the files to your workspace as an early part of the build.
The example will need updating for your visual studio version, and you should pass the sources Directory to the script.
REM %1 represents the Sources directory
REM Compute variables
SET TfExe="%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe"
REM SET TfExe="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe"
Set RefPath="$/TFS BUILDS/Shapes/Main/Includes"
Set localPath="%~1\Includes"
REM set the Drive Letter for this build
Set Localdrive=%localPath:~1,2%
%Localdrive%
cd %1
REM Map the folders
%TfExe% workfold /map %RefPath% %localPath%
REM Get the required content
%TfExe% get %RefPath%
REM Unmap the folders
%TfExe% workfold /unmap %RefPath%
There is no easy way to do this. As you've discovered, the source settings do double-duty, they define the set of files needed for the build that are downloaded and the set of files that trigger a CI.
I would argue this isn't a problem, if the Includes are used in your build, then I would want to kick off a new build when they change, to ensure that the change didn't break anything in the build process.
Use the special keyword ***_NO_CI*** in your checkin into the Includes directory.
See this post for further details.
I seem to be getting a lot of pain with the processing of app.config and token files (we have this working with the older ".11" templates).
It looks like currently (using the ReleaseTfvcTemplate.12.xaml) this is running the tokenisation after the build.
While I can make the app.config / myapp.exe.config stuff work by deliberately copying the .token file into my output folder (so the recursive search finds it) this feels pretty horrid.
As a fix I'm tempted to move lines 182-230 to just before the RunMSBuild task on line 175 (creating a new sequence at that point)
Is this the correct approach or have I missed some documentation somewhere (or a later version of the template?)
Thanks guys... Anyway for future reference I did make the change.
However I had misunderstood the exact nature of the order things happen out of the box which is as follows:
Get the project out of source control
build with msbuild
Copy the .config.token file over the .config file. This is in the TFS template
As part of the deploy to a server then the token entries in the .config files are replaced. This is in the release manager template.
Tests are run in the msbuild binary output folders.
The problem is this doesn't really work if you're using an project type that uses app.config file as the msbuild process renames these output.exe.config during the msbuild stage so you need to create both an output.exe.config (marked as copy to output) and an output.exe.config.token so when the post deploy is the final output gets configured correctly. This also a problem if you want to tokenise some mstest dlls as these typically use an app.config as well. Basically this is a bit of a mess unless you are using web.config.
We worked our way around this by using the modification I suggested above (you need to create a sequence at line 175 and move lines 178-230 up into the sequence, this is GetBuildDirectory variable bits and the if statement) followed by adding an additional deployment stage which copies back onto the build server with the new tokenised files so the mstest can run against them.
So our new process looks like this:
Get the project out of source control
Copy the .config.token file over the .config file i.e app.config.token copied over app.config
build with msbuild (this means we end up with tokenised myapp.exe.config and mytests.dll.config)
As part of the deploy to a server then the token entries in the .config files are replaced. This is a release management step in the release template.
Deploy the tests back into a folder on build server (think this has to be a fixed folder until update 4 of release manager is deployed) the token entries in the .config files are replaced (so our integration tests can use the newly deployed servers). This is a release management step in the release template.
Tests are run in the fixed folder on the build server (rather than the msbuild output directory) so the test wildcard needs to be changed in the tfs build template.
Quick final note we don't use that build directory variable and it's left at blank I'm not convinced this would work if it was set to a value...
The replacement of variables in config files with Release Management happens at deployment time and not at compile time.
When RM deployes your app it inserts the correct variables.
It sounds like you're hitting one of two issues:
You need to include the .token file in your project and make sure it's set to Copy Always, so that it gets copied to the build output folder.
If you're building a web application, I've seen a bug in the release build process template that doesn't touch the contents of the _PublishedWebsites folder. I don't know if it's been fixed in Update 4 or not, but it was definitely still a problem in earlier versions.
So, I'm new to TFS build definitions - and the RA team at my company asked how to deploy a project that I built. In this case, a Windows Service project.
When I compile from Visual Studio, the "bin" directory has all the files I need... including copying a ".bat" file that is set to "copy local".
Anyway, the last step of the default "Build Definition" is "Run MSBuild for Project"... but that seems to just stick every DLL in the entire solution into an output directory.
Am I missing something? ... how do I get the build to:
Only build a single project - not the entire solution.
Put all the files that would be in the "bin" directory into the output directory.
When you're editing the Build Definition you can specify just a single project if you wish. By default TFS Build should put everything in the Build Drop that you typically find in your bin directory.
If you find the build is missing files that you expect to be there consult the MSBuild log that you can find linked from the TFS Build log. You can also run the TFS Build with Verbosity=Diagnostic when you queue up a build, which will cause the MSBuild log to contain much more detail.
Dylan Smith's answer was correct, and got me 90% there... the was a strange bug that some quick Googling found here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/uk/tfsbuild/thread/990fdd96-69bc-4e99-be0e-acc0874e022f
So, the solution is:
Do what Dylan said (pick the csproj file).
Remove the "Any CPU" part of the build... just target "Release" or "Debug" or whatever.