Introduction
I have a problem with Team Foundation Server Express 2013 on my machine. I have two build definitions on the same controller and agent, both of which run on the same server and the same environment as well.
It should be noted that I already looked at the "similar questions" without any luck. This is clearly not related to the same root cause, and the symptoms are slightly different too.
One of them is a gated check-in build definition, which just compiles everything when commiting to the development branch.
Another is a scheduled build definition, which runs every saturday at 3 AM, building any changes that may have been committed to the main branch since last time.
The gated build definition has a process (which only has minor changes for not running tests and just compiling the code) based on the TfvcTemplate.12.xaml template.
The scheduled build definition process is based on some Azure build definition template that might come from an older version of Visual Studio, possibly based on some Azure template, or maybe the TfvcContinuousDeployment.12.xaml template.
The issue
My gated build definition runs just as expected, without issues. It compiles the full solution, and only passes if the compilation succeeds.
The shceduled build definition however fails compiling (even before it reaches the point where it runs the unit tests). The error I see is as follows.
Obviously this is due to missing fakes assemblies. I tried taking the assemblies and checking them in (which I would rather avoid), only to find that this build definition runs just fine, but not the gated one which ran just fine before.
I thought about just running fakes.exe in the build template to just generate them manually before compiling, but in my initial tests (to see if this theory would even work), it won't even run in the commandline, and outputs some errors and warnings that I don't understand (but are probably not relevant anyway, since I might be running fakes.exe with improper arguments).
Updates
Update #1
It should be noted that I have Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate installed on my build server as well. Both this (and TFS 2013 Express) have Update 3 installed, and the server is fully updated.
I ended up abandoning fakes all together, and implementing Moq instead. Works a lot better, and forces me to abandon shims or moles, which are often considered bad practise anyway.
Related
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).
I've been tasked with setting up a new Team Foundation/Build server at my company, with which we'll be starting a new project. Nobody here currently has experience with TFS, so I'm learning all of this on my own. Everything is working so far; The server's been set up, the Repository and Team Project has been created, the Build Server has been created, and I've created a simple hello world application to verify the source control and Continuous Integration builds (on the build server) run properly.
However, I'm having a problem setting up the automatic versioning. I've installed the TfsVersioning project, and it's working fine; I'm able to define a format for my assembly versions. I haven't yet decided what format I'll use; probably something like Major.Minor.Changeset.Revision (I'm aware of the potential problem regarding using the changeset number in the assembly version, so I may decide to switch to Major.Minor.Julian.Revision before we begin development).
The problem:
I don't want assemblies to have new file versions if their source code has NOT changed since the last build. With a continuous Integration build this isn't a problem, as the build server will only grab the source files that have changed, causing an incremental build which produces only updated modules; the existing unchanged modules won't be built, so their version will remain unchanged.
If I set up a nightly build, I'll want to clean the workspace and perform a Build-All. However, this means that ALL assemblies will have new version (assuming the Assembly File Version includes the build number).
A solution?
This has prompted me to consider using the latest changeset number in the Assembly File Version. This way, if nothing has been committed between two successive Build-Alls, the versions won't be incremented. However, this would mean that a change and commit to a single file would force a version increment on ALL assemblies.
I'm looking for one of two things:
A way to only increment Assembly Version Numbers if their source/dependencies have changed since the last build. Successive Build-Alls should not cause changes in version numbers.
OR
A way for testers and non-developers to be able to tell version W.X.Y.Z and version W.X.Y.Z+1 of assembly 'Foo' are identical, even though they have differing file versions.
I've probably read about 20 articles on the subject, and nobody (except this guy) seem to address the issue. If what I'm asking for isn't common practice in the Team Foundation ALM, how do I address the second bullet point above?
Thanks for your time!
This is something I did in the past. The solution has two critical points:
You must use an incremental build, i.e. Clean Workspace = None
The change to AssemblyInfo.cs must be computed at each project
This latter is the most complex and I will just draft the solution here.
In the custom MSBuild properties use CustomAfterMicrosoftCommonTargets to inject an hook in normal Visual Studio compile
/property:CustomAfterMicrosoftCommonTargets=custom.proj
Also forward a value for the version
/property:BuildNumber=1.2.3.4
In custom.proj redefine the target BeforeCompile to something similar
<Target Name="BeforeCompile"
Inputs="$(MSBuildAllProjects);
#(Compile);
#(_CoreCompileResourceInputs);
$(ApplicationIcon);
$(AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile);
#(ReferencePath);
#(CompiledLicenseFile);
#(EmbeddedDocumentation);
$(Win32Resource);
$(Win32Manifest);
#(CustomAdditionalCompileInputs)"
Outputs="#(DocFileItem);
#(IntermediateAssembly);
#(_DebugSymbolsIntermediatePath);
$(NonExistentFile);
#(CustomAdditionalCompileOutputs)"
Condition="'$(BuildNumber)'!=''">
<Message Text="*TRACE* BuildNumber: $(BuildNumber)"/>
<MyTasksThatReplaceAssemblyVersion
BuildNumber="$(BuildNumber)"
File="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs"/>
</Target>
You need to have a task for replacing the AssemblyFileVersion in the AssemblyInfo.cs source. MSBuild Extension Pack has an AssemblyInfo task for this purpose.
I posted the full details at my blog here, here and here.
I am new to TFSBuild but I have been able to create a build definition for my solution. I have a couple questions that help would be great with.
I have created 3 definitions - I wonder if this is the correct way to this.
A definition that fires for every check in, builds the code and runs unit tests only
A definition runs every night, builds everything, runs all unit and integration tests
A definition that I specifically use for deployments - so I specify the environment via a parameter and it builds the code, runs unit and integration tests and ms deploys it to specified environment, again via parameter
When I branch my code etc, I will have to create 3 definitions for each and this could become unmanageable. Feedback on this please?
Is it true that each definition has its own set of build numbers? Can they be shared?
My application is an MVC4 app with VS2012 IDE.
Sadly TFS Build doesn't have very good support for branches, yes this typically means you duplicate your build definitions for each branch. There are a few custom build process template that I've seen in the past which try to get around this, but nothing built in.
You could replace #2 with a windows scheduler task to run #1 with custom parameters, not the nicest solution, but could be extended to queue every build definition at midnight with the integration test flag.
For #3 instead of using a build definition to deploy I use an external tool called TFS Deployer, this allows me to use any build to deploy simply by changing the build quality of the build. Reducing the number of builds that need to be setup by 1 for each branch.
Each build definition has its own build numbers, there's no built in way to share however I believe this is set by the build definition, so you may be able to hack around it somehow.
I'm new to TFS and we're trying to automate the test / build / deploy process for our builds.
The problem I'm experiencing is that when I try to start a build with automatic deployment (for a webpage) using the MSBuild Arguments it complains that it doesn't have the necessary DLLs and I've figured out so far that they get installed with Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate, but then other people complained that something like Visual Studio shouldn't get installed on a Server =)
The TFS is also the build server for now and I'd like the know if there are any known requirements for these things to work:
Automated UI Testing
Automated deployment
Automated publish
Code Analysis
I'm working with TFS 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 (Premium). Any help, comments or different approaches are welcome =)
The way we handle that on my team is to actually check all the references needed to build the product in to source control. Anything beyond the .NET framework itself, and whatever you get for installing a build controller/build agent, gets checked in..
Positive bits:
Setting up a build agent is trivial (just "Install Server 2K8R2, install build agent, start building").
Don't have to worry about complicated SDK installation to match people's dev boxes.. References are all the exact version checked in to source control.
You get binary version control, which means if you need to do a maintenance release and build against last year's version of a particular API, it's super easy.
Negative bits:
Bloats your source control a bit
Feels weird checking binaries in to source control
Need to be very vigilant about maintaining structure and cleanliness of how you check in the binaries, otherwise it can easily get out of control
Beyond that, as far as making the test bits work from your build agent.. Probably the easiest way would be to install the test agent. The UI automation stuff in VS2010 is the "CodedUI Test" framework.. It extends the normal VS Unit Test framework, but requires some additional registrations to work.
More complicated, but super useful longer term is to set up the full "Visual Studio Lab Management" platform. Downside is, to fully leverage it you'll need to hook up a System Center Virtual Machine Manager server and at least one Hyper-V host, and build out a virtual machine with a "Clean" VM snapshot (everything except the product you're testing installed). Once all that's in place you get a really slick end-to-end build-deploy-test experience.. You trigger the product build via the build system, once that completes your environment is restored to that absolutely clean state (no worries about leftover bits from last version corrupting your testing, etc), the product gets published to this test environment, and then it executes your tests.
Not sure if you're using TFS for workitem tracking, testcase management, project planning, and whatnot.. If not, the lab management stuff may be too heavy-weight to mess with. More info here if you're interested in messing with that part. :)
Your build server needs the appropriate versions of Visual Studio. For instance, if you want to do database unit tests, then the build server needs VS Ultimate to be installed.
If there's an issue with having "client" software installed on a server, then use a separate build server. It makes perfect sense for a build server to have the necessary tools installed to perform builds.
I have a vcproj file that includes a simple pre-build event along the lines of:
Helpertask.exe $(ProjectDir)
This works fine on developer PCs, but when the solution is built on our TFS 2008 build server under MSBuild, $(ProjectDir) is either blank or points to an unrelated folder on the server!
So far the best workaround I have managed is to hard code the developer and server paths instead:
if exist C:\DeveloperCode\MyProject HelperTask.exe C:\DeveloperCode\MyProject
if exist D:\BuildServerCode\MyProject HelperTask.exe D:\BuildServerCode\MyProject
This hack works in post-build steps but it doesn't work for a pre-build step (the Pre-build task now does nothing at all under MSBuild!)
Do you have any ideas for a fix or workaround? I have very little hair left!
$(MSBuildProjectDirectory) worked for me
I think your problem may be related to how items are initalized. An items include attribute is evaluated at the begining of a build. So if you depend on files that are created in the build process you must declare these as dynamic items. Dynamic items are those defined inside of a target, or by using the CreateItem task. I've detailed this on my blog MSBuild: Item and Property Evaluation.
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
My Book: Inside the Microsoft Build Engine : Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build
I think the problem is that build server's workspace probably isn't initialized properly.
I just kept getting problems with this - I tried many different approaches but they all failed in mysterious ways.
Once $(ProjectDir) started behaving properly again, the pre-build step stopped executing the command (I added echo commands above and below it - they were both executed, but the program in between them was not. No errors or output of any kind were generated to indicate why it failed).
I don't know if this is a dodgy server of if MSBuild is having a laugh.
I've given up now. I gave the build server a big kick and have changed tack: We now run this tool offline (manually) and check in the results for the build server to use. So much for an automated build :-( If only MSBuild would run solutions in the same way as Visual Studio does - it's maddening that it sets up the environment completely differently (different paths coming out of the solution variables, ouptus redirected into different folders so you can't find them where they're supposed to be, etc)
I branched an existing project and $(ProjectDir) kept the old directory in the newly branched code. But that's because I had some compiling errors. Once every project in the solution compiled without errors, $(ProjectDir) changed to the correct path.
Carlos A Merighe