Background
Currently I have many C# projects in many TFS team projects.
Several C# projects reference C# projects in different team projects. I do this by referencing the output dll in the Bin/Release folder of the other C# project.
As long as we checkout & build the solutions in the team projects in the correct order everything works fine on all dev's machines.
We're moving to Visual Studio Online and I'm playing around with automated builds.
Problem
The problem I'm having is that it can't find the dlls to reference, even after the project that would output them (to \Bin\Release) has ran.
I've disabled parallel builds (to ensure the referenced projects get built first) and this seems to be the case based on the build logs. The issue is that the projects that depend on these can't find the dlls and as a result I get "the type or namespace could not be found" errors everywhere.
What's the easiest way of resolving this?
Note that I've read several posts/tutorials etc. about this but all seem to involve changing the source control structure, or fiddling about with workspaces etc. I want something where I can keep the simple workspace mapping on the dev's machines where we map "$\" to "C:\TFS\". I don't want to have to remember to periodically merge in changes from a shared library, or maintain lots of folder mappings within a workspace (on dev machines).
Open your process template xaml (usually DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml or TfvcTemplate.12.xaml with XML editor, not the designer). Look for mtbwa:MSBuild on Run MSBuild for Project activity. Remove the OutDir attribute, save and check-in. This will force MSBuild to use the default OutDir for each project.
Related
Currently I'm in the progress of updating TFS 2012 to 2013. My plan is to use the default build process template and stick to it, if possible. The existing build definitions use the old TFS method with TFSBuild.proj files. In thse proj files everything happens. Initializing the solution directory, build, clean, run unit test, drop files, etc. Compared to the 2013 build process template this is incorrect, since the workflow has activities for build, clean, run tests, drop files, etc. As well it seems that the targets file used in the TFSBuild.proj files is of a previous TFS version and hasn't been updated to a 2013 version.
The problem is that besides the build, clean, run test an drop files activities there are other activities needed. Version numbers are changed in certain files, obfuscation for dlls, check procedures if the source doesn't contain any unwanted files, zipping of pdb files, etc.
Of course it is possible to execute these tasks/activities with PowerShell scripts. On the other hand working with tasks in the a project file also seems logical. My concern with performing extra tasks in a project files is that TFS is running the activities for test, dropping files, etc. after calling the MSBuild activity.
Can someone point me in the right direction? Do I need custom developed activities that I can use in the build process template? Or is working with PowerShell scripts best practice?
I think you've answered your own question! Poweshell is the way forward!
I would say that modifying the XAML and writing a custom activity should only be considered if powershell isn't working for you, or if your scripts are becoming so big and difficult to debug that it makes sense to turn them in to code. As you mention, some of these tasks will need to be performed well after the MSbuild activity has completed so that's not going to work.
It looks like you want to do some fairly simple steps at defined points in the process and the powershell extensibility points are perfect for this.
A simple script for versioning in the pre-build step. Checking the source for unwanted files could happen here as well.
The obfuscation, zipping and copying stuff can happen post test.
From a Maintainability point of view, I would say that powershell has a much bigger user base than Windows Workflow and MSBuild so that's another advantage to this approach.
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.
We have installers referencing a wixlib file to get some common functionality. The wixlib is built in another solution then moved to a folder within that solution. When we try to build the installers with a TFS build, we get an error from light.exe:
light.exe: The system cannot find the file '..\..\..\Core\Common\assemblies\v1.0\Common.Wix.wixlib' with type 'Source'.
Our regular projects can reference \assembiles\v1.0, since we have some other common assemblies stored there. How do we get WiX to recognize this location during build?
You are referencing wixlib directly. So as far as I understand the TFS build process, it should be added to TFS project of your solution. TFS project shouldn't be dependent on the output of another non-dependent solution. It is at least bad practice. And in any case you can't guarantee this output would be generated before your project build on server.
As far as I remember, TFS build creates separate folder for each build and gets sources there. So your solutions are no longer on the same folder hierarchy level.
One more point in favor of explicitly copying wixlibs into your installer project: versioning - in this case any bugs made in the common library will not immediately break all projects that reference it. And you can gradually upgrade and test every project. Can you imagine auomatically downloading new version of any 3rd party dll on every build? Any change in that dll will immediately break your application even if changes are not critical to you.
Since the shared component and the active solution are in two separate projects in TFS, the workspace must be setup so that the relative paths for references remain intact. The easiest way to do this is to set your Build Agent Folder structure in Workspace in your TFS Build to have $(SourceDir) represent your root. However, don't change your Source Control Folder - that stays the same.
For example, say you have the following structure:
-TFS
|-SharedComponents
||-MyComponents
|-ProjectArea
||-MyProject
You would want to have the following two items in the build Workspace:
Source Control Folder Build Agent Folder
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$/ProjectArea/MyProject $(SourceDir)\ProjectArea\MyProject
$/SharedComponents/MyComponents $(SourceDir)\SharedComponents\MyComponents
This mimics the structure in TFS in your build folder, thus allowing all relative paths to remain intact.
One more note about this configuration: Since you have the shared components in another location, you may want to create a solution folder in MyProject and add the components that you are using to it. This will ensure they get pulled automatically when anyone loads your project from TFS - they won't have to go back and pull down the share components folder separately after discovering a build error.
I am pretty new to TFS and Build configuration tasks so forgive me if this problem has a simple answer.
I have a team project that is sort of a common library(CL) that contains dlls and apis that I commonly use throughout my projects. All my other projects reference files directly from the mapped folder for the CL on my dev machine.
I am trying to set up a build definition for Project A(Build server is on a different machine). I want always ensure that the CL is the latest before each build so is it possible to have the build definition pull the latest files first? The only other alternative is to start including the CL in of every project directly.
I tried adding a working folder for the CL, but it does not seem to get the files before it attempts to build project A. And then after when I try to rebuild after the failure, I receive a error saying that the CL working folder "is already mapped in workspace".
Instead of mapping in the sources, why not build the common library, deploy it to a common location, and have all the projects that use it reference it at the common location?
In addition to simply making more sense (it should be common binary, not common source), this greatly improves Continuous Integration builds. If several builds map the same source into their workspace, then when the common source is changed, all of those CI builds will be kicked off.
We Have a large VS solution using project references which is build by TFS Build like so:
Solution
- Project 1
- Project 2
- Project ...
- Project N
Because the solution is too large we have several smaller solutions which we use day to day:
SubSolution
- Project 1
- Project 19
The problem is that developers working on SubSolution find that it is not building because the project references could not be found, so they change the projects to use file references.
This then goes on to break the TFS Build which cannot find these file references because they have not been built yet (Even though the projects are in the same solution). Is there a way around this tug of war between the two types of references. What is the correct way of splitting out your solutions?
What is the correct way of splitting out your solutions?
Check out this chapter from the TFS guide by the Patterns & Practices team:
Chapter 3 - Structuring Projects and Solutions in Source Control
Pay special attention to this note to the "Partitioned Solution" scenario (which I believe you're actually trying to implement):
Unlike previous versions of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2005 relies upon MSBuild. It is now possible to create solution structures that do not include all referenced projects and still build without errors. As long as the master solution has been built first, generating the binary output from each project, MSBuild is able to follow project references outside the bounds of your solution and build successfully. This only works if you use project references, not file references. You can successfully build solutions created this way from the Visual Studio build command line and from the IDE, but not with Team Build by default. In order to build successfully with Team Build use the master solution that includes all of the projects and dependencies.
Regardless of how you organise your build, developers should understand how references work, and be aware when they make changes to references that they shouldn't check those changes in unless they intended to make a change to the build process.
On the subject of organising your builds - as Dmytrol says, project references should work between solutions (As long as the target is already built, however that's also the case for file references anyway).
My advice would be to group your projects into small workable solutions and use project references within those solutions. Your main solution file / build can use project references too, however if you find project references between the smaller solutions too difficult to maintain you can use file references instead, and control the build order through project dependencies or the project build order (accessible within Visual Studio by right-clicking on a project in your solution).