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.
Related
I'm setting up some TFS build definitions. I see that once I run a build, the work is done within a subfolder of a subdirectory of /Agent/_work. It appears that the subfolder is the same between different executions of the same build definition, but I see no way to know in advance where I should expect TFS to set its working directory, nor do I see any way of specifying the name of the directory manually.
How does TFS determine what directory to use for the output from a build?
Refer to the documentation on build variables. The base folder can be accessed via the $(Agent.BuildDirectory) variable. The source folder is $(Build.SourcesDirectory).
You can't set this. It's determined by the agent's configuration.
I want to use macros of current csproj such as ${TargetPath} $(TargetName),in vNext Build defination as part of vs build task property of MSBuild argument,to do some copy etc.
But I found it not work,in build log, the macros did not be change into the absolute path.
Is there any way to use these macros just like in csproj post-build event?I did not find description about this on msdn ,and I could not use it in each csproj,because we have more than one thousand project files, edit the prj file one by one is not good:(
Thanks alot for your help.
Update
I want each project only output its own assembly without any referenced assembly when build.But I can't change project file to modify the reference property "copy local" to false.
You just need to add it as MSBuild arguments:
If you mean you want to achieve the function in post-build event same as this question Visual Studio Post Build Event - Copy to Relative Directory Location. There is no such thing like post-build in vnext build.
You can add several steps to copy the assemblies (One step for one project) and specify the copy root in the step.Refer to this question Copy one file in target directory on deploy from visual studio team services
However, as you have mentioned there are thousand project files. You can create a powershell script and add it in the build definition to copy the files.
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.
I’m using a few custom MSBuild tasks that are checked into source control. I would like to import these tasks into my TFSBuild.proj file that TFS uses to build the project. Right now I have created a 2nd project file that includes all of the uses of these custom tasks. I do this because I can run this project file after the workspace has been created and the files have been downloaded.
Is there a way to reference the files on the server from the build project so that I don’t have to do this 2 step process?
I wish the following would work.
<Import Project="$/My/Server/Path/Custom.tasks.targets" />
This question is related to another question. In my case the tasks are checked into source control so that the build machines don't have another required install. Placing the tasks locally doesn't work very well in this case.
If you put the tasks and the .targets file(s) in the same version control folder as your TFSBuild.proj file (or in a sub-directory beneath it), TFS Build will download all of that content to your build agent prior to kicking off your build script.