I've been trying for a week to deploy a webrole to Azure Clous Services without quite getting there.
Here is my setup:
I've got a cloud solution with a cloud project and a MVC application (standard no changes to template yet). Its under source control in Visual Studio Online.
I'm using octopack to try generating the nuget package
I'm using the buildt in nuget repo from Octopus
The Octopus server and tentacle is hosted on a VM in azure
I've created a step-template for my deployment step (see this article)
My plan:
I'd like to have a CI build to a dev-service and a seperate build to push my project to the staging environment and roll it onto the production environment using Octopus.
My problem:
The packages that are produced by Octopack seems to not contain what they should. And I've tried to play around with the nuspec file included in my webrole to get it just right. Something ends up missing either way i try.
Have anyone gotten this to work? I'd appreciate any tips pointing me in the right direction as I've slowly been running out of ideas. So i turn to you my fellow nerdlings for some much needed help.
Regards
ZiGGstern
Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like you're in need of the octo.exe to automate deployments after build within Visual Studio/TFS Online to your target environments.
I'm trying to focus on this statement:
I'd like to have a CI build to a dev-service and a seperate build to
push my project to the staging environment and roll it onto the
production environment using Octopus.
You can configure within your build-template, using the "Post-Deploy Script Path" a PowerShell script to call the Octo.exe (with an API Key) and fire off a deployment for your desired environment(s). You can customize this per build if you so choose. I've used this method by creating a folder within the root of my Solution (I call it 'Tools' but the name doesn't matter). Within that Tools folder, I add a PowerShell script AND the octo.exe. The PS script fires the Octo.exe which makes a call to my Octopus Server and with the "create release" option, I'm able to automatically deploy to whatever environment AFTER my build finishes within TFS. Make sure to always include those files (right-click in VS and in file properties select 'always copy').
I'm not quite sure why your NuGet packages would not be configured correctly, but that should be remedied first. Your question is trying to ask for two things and it's not clear which is more important to you; NuGet package or the Deployment from CI build. Having said that, I think you need to give more details on why you think your NuGet package is inadequate or not working correctly for your Azure services.
Please note, the site you supplied is using a custom PowerShell script in the form of a step template. It may be best to try the default Azure step within Octopus first before using a customized script. Just a thought.
Read more about the Octo.exe here: http://docs.octopusdeploy.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=360596
Related
I am having trouble understanding the fundamentals of octopus deployment. I am using octo.exe with the create-release and deploy-release commands. I am also using the octopack plugin.
I am getting an error but that's not really the point - I want to understand how these peices fit together. I have searched and searched on this topic but every article seems to assume the reader has a ton of background info on octopus and automated deployment already, which I do not.
My question is: what is the difference between using octopack by passing the octopack argument to msbuild and simply creating a release using octo.exe? Do I need to do both, or will one or the other suffice? If both are needed, what do each of them do exactly?
Release and deployment as defined in the Octopus Deploy Documentation:
...a project is like a recipe that describes the steps (instructions) and variables (ingredients) required to deploy your apps and services. A release captures all the project and package details so it be deployed over and over in a safe and repeatable way. A deployment is the execution of the steps to deploy a release to an environment.
OctoPack is
...the easiest way to package .NET applications from your continuous integration/automated build process is to use OctoPack.
It is easy to use, but as Alex already mentioned, you could also use nuget.exe to create the package.
Octo.exe
is a command line tool that builds on top of the Octopus Deploy REST API.
It allows you to do much of the things you'd normally do through the Octopus Deploy web interface.
So, OctoPack and octo.exe serve a different purpose. You can't create a release with OctoPack and octo.exe is not for creating packages.
Octopack is there to NuGet package the project. It has some additional properties to help with pushing a package onto the NuGet feed, etc.
octo.exe is used to automate the creation of releases on the Octopus server and optionally deploy.
Note: a release in Octopus is basically a set of instructions on how to make the deployment. It includes the snapshot of variables and steps, references to the versions of the NuGet packages, etc.
octopack is a good starter, however I stopped using it some time ago with a few reasons.
No support for .Net 2.0 projects (and I needed to move all legacy apps into Octopus)
didn't like it modifying the project files (personal preference)
Pure nuget.exe was not much more work for me.
We have just installed TFS 2015 (Update 1) on-premise and are trying to create a Continuous Integration/Build system using the new TFS Build system. The build works fine, and gives me a green light, but when I look at the default build it has only built the binaries from the bin directory, and there seems to be no easy way to deploy the app on-premise to a local server.
There are two deploy options for a filesystem copy, and a powershell script, and it would certainly be easy enough to use them to copy files to a new server, but since the build only built the binaries, I don't see a tool to gather up the Web artifacts (cshtml, images, scripts, css, etc..) for this.
After an exhaustive google search, I've only found one article which talks about this at:
http://www.deliveron.com/blog/building-websites-team-foundation-build-2015/
However, this uses WebDeploy and creates a rather messy deploy package.
How can I deploy the site (standard MVC web application, in fact my tests are using the default boilerplate site created by the create project wizard) complete with artifacts to a local server in the easiest possible way? I don't want to have to install WebDeploy on the servers, and would rather use PowerShell or something to deploy the final artifacts.
The build is just the standard Visual Studio build template, with 4 steps (Build, Test, Index & Publish, Publish Build Artifacts).
We use "Visual Studio Build" step and as Arguments for MSBuild we use following line:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=$(DeploymentConfiguration)
On Variables tab page DeploymentConfiguration has to be configured. It must be the Name of the publish Profile (filename of the pubxml file). If the file Name is Build.pubxml the publish profile is Build.
for example:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:PublishProfile=Build
I wanted to add that Ben Day has an excellent write-up that helped us package quickly and then release to multiple environments through Release Manager.
His msbuild arguments look like this:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:DeleteExistingFiles=True /p:publishUrl=$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\for-deploy\website
The difference between this and the accepted answer is that this parameter set stages everything in an artifacts folder, and then saves it as part of the build. We can then deploy exactly the same code repeatedly.
We capture the web.env.config files alongside the for-deploy folder and then use xdt transforms in the release process to ensure everything gets updated for whichever environment we're deploying to. It works well for all our web projects.
We use WebDeploy/MSDeploy for 40+ applications and love it. We do install WebDeploy on all our servers so we can deploy more easily but you could also use the Web Deploy On Demand feature which doesn't require WebDeploy be pre-installed.
I have a console application that I am building on a on-premises tfs 2015 with a Visual Studio Build. What I want to achieve is:
If the application is executed on a dev machine during normal development there will be a simple message "Hello Developer" and if it was deployed in a qa environment and the tester runs it from there it should print "Hello Tester". Just a simple demo.
So I think I need an App.config to be able to store a configuration that will than be changed during the build process. I was confident that this is a no brainer as I found a lot of websites describing something like this but it turns out, that they all are not revealing the interesting bits like
How does the App.config needs to look like?
How is the variable used in C# code?
What are the needed settings in the Release Management Client?
What are the needed settings in the on-premises TFS Build Definition?
or were out-dated (TFS 2013 (1), RM Client 2013 (2)) or were using Visual Studio Online/ Team Services or were using custom tasks.
Can someone explain me, how to achieve the described scenario "Hello Developer"/ "Hello Tester"?
Thanks a lot!
We use MSDeploy for this type of setup. You can extend MSBuild by adding an Import line in your csproj file to a new .targets file in your project. Reference the MSDeploy task and use that to create a MSDeploy package for your console app. Finally create Parameterization files to define the config section you want to transform and SetParameters files for each environment with the appropriate message.
This blog post is for a database project but the basics steps are the same.
Within RM you would use MSDeploy to deploy the package with the appropriate SetParmeter file against the target server via a PowerShell command.
Have you tried with SlowCheetah?
This package allows you to automatically transform your app.config (or
any file) when you press F5 in Visual Studio. You can have different
transformations based on the build configuration. This will enable you
to easily have different app settings, connection strings, etc for
Debug versus Release. If you want to transform other files you can do
that too.
I've been reading and experimenting for days. I bought the latest "Inside the Microsoft Build Engine - Using MSBUild and Team Foundation Build". I've been trying to figure things out by looking at the build targets.
I was quickly able to get a package to be built on the build server, but I want to be able to specify the installation folder, so it doesn't go into wwwroot. I read that I would have to switch the project over from using cassini to the local IIS server. Went through all of that.
The args I'm passing to msbuild through the definition:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:DeployTarget=Package /p:MSDeployPublishMethod=InProc /p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True /p:MsDeployServiceUrl=localhost
I've got SO MANY questions, but I'll start simply. If anyone can provide guidance I'd be super thankful.
If the named application doesn't exist on the build server (which it shouldn't!) the package creation fails. If I add a shell app named accordingly the package is built.
Even if I hack my way past #1 when I try to deploy using Web.deploy.cmd, it fails:
Error: Using a 64-bit source and a 32-bit destination with provider appHostConfig is not supported.
Note that the build server is 64-bit and THIS target server (development) is 32-bit. I have the build configuration building against "any cpu". Oh, and I'm invoking the deployment FROM the 32-bit machine, so there's only the 32-bit msdeploy.exe available.
In the appropriate BuildDefinition under "Process", expand the "Advanced" section and set the value of "MSBuild Arguments" to "/p:DeployOnBuild=True".
That will make your WebDeploy Package built according to your settings in the project properties.
I write 2 articles about how to create Web Package and auto deploy it to a Web Server, I think it maybe useful for you.
Auto Deploy your Website for QA with Team Build click here
How to run remote deploy with MS Deploy? click here
I have a team foundation server with build server, when I run a build it deploys to a website on that box. However I also want to do the same on Production which is a server on an external network and not part of the same domain.
I thought about looking at TFS Deployer but that just seemed to work within a network, I'm going to test it out as soon as I get a chance but I thought the best idea was to ask here when working with something so critical.
Is it a really bad idea to have a way of easily deploying to production?
Does anyone here deploy to production using whatever method? How do you do it?
Essentially the accepted answer will go to the person who can tell me the best method for achieving a deployment but pointing me in the right direction is sure to get an up vote as long as it's not too obvious.
Depending on the infrastructure you have available to you you can use wix to create msi's and use SMS configuration manager to deploy them to a target collection. This is the direction that we are moving to but have not reached yet. We also integrated wix into our build process to create the MSI artifacts. The reason we wanted to go down this path was because we are using CruiseControl.net as our continuous integration server and we have a nant script that we use to perform both the build process and the deployment process. They are both separate targets in the nant file, but what we wanted was a consistent model of deployment to all environments including production.
What are are doing currently is we are manually moving zips (which are artifacts of our current build process) to production. When the zips are unpackaged in the production environment we have to remove all the web.config, app.config etc from the zips and if we have new entries in the configs they are made manually.
Found msdeploy http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/archive/2008/01/22/welcome-to-the-web-deployment-team-blog.aspx