Trouble building Orchard on a Team Foundation Service Build Controller - tfs

I am trying to setup a Team Foundation Service Build of Orchard and auto deploy to Azure. The structure of Orchard comes by default with the source and lib directories as siblings. The solution file does NOT directly reference the lib files.
.\lib(modules)(files)
.\src\solution.sln
.\src(projects)(files)
When executing a build on the Elastic Build of Team Foundation Service, the build errors report that none of the library files can be found. It appears that they are not being downloaded during the Get Source operation even though the workspace mapping is at the parent directory of lib and src. Without visibility into the build server, I cannot verify that.
Does anybody have any ideas on the cause?
Any way to force verify the lib files are downloaded for the build?

An obvious mistake on my part, some of the dlls were excluded from source control and therefore were never downloaded. :-( A gentle reminder to verify all assumptions.

Related

Using TFS to output build definitions bin folder on CI build

I just started using TFS not to long ago and I ran into a slight issue. I have a class library project called EplanInterface.Addin. This class library project is used as a way to load functionality into a 3rd party program through their API. All of this is working fine but the issue comes into play here:
The Issue:
So the problem I am running into is that this Addin library is not referenced by any other projects but still needs to be output to my Drop folder within my TFS build. Typically to load the Addin into the 3rd party program I would copy the debug/release folder to the server and select/load the dll accordingly. My TFS build does not seem to grab the anything from the Addin though?
App.Config
Along with that I am using SlowCheetah to try and transform my app.config file resources correctly. Whatever solution provided I need to also figure out how to select a transform when doing the build configuration and output the dlls with the correct build configuration config file.
Build Definition
My build definition is the basic asp.net template they provide which works great for my web api and MVC projects. I guess I am unsure how to force it to also build the addin / output the dll files for my addin to reference?
Other Info:
TFS Version: 16.122.27102.1
Addin Project .Net Framework 4.5.2
Slow Cheetah Version: 3.2.26
You can simply add another build task to your pipeline to build the specific addin project and then have it output to the artifacts directory (as the default "Build Solution" task should already be doing).
The other option is to edit the solution file in Visual Studio and include the addin as a project dependency. You may still need to manage the binary output though.

How do I add external files to a Jenkins job?

I'm working with Jenkins to make a build of a Visual Studio C++ project I have in a git repository. However, although I don't upload them to github, my project needs SDL2's external libraries and DLL as well as some assets.
How can I add them to my jenkins job to generate a build of my project? I want to add the SDL2's libs and DLL as well as my assets folder and place them in the job workspace, in a way that won't make me upload the files everytime jenkins builds my project. But I haven't found anything that clears that for me.
Thanks!!
If your project needs assets (something like pixel art), this should probably be uploaded to GitHub along with your code. Another option is to uploaded assets to some other public/private repository that Jenkins can access.
As for the SDL2 libraries and DLL, you are correct that this should not be uploaded to GitHub. Instead, I would recommend using something like Docker to package your C++ project with its dependencies. Manually installing them on the Jenkins server is also an option, but not ideal because you'll have to do this on any machine you want your code to run.
Hope that gives you somewhere to start!

Linked file in WCF RIA service does not build in TFS Build server

I've just setup a TFS (2012) server and now I'm trying to build the complete code (written in .NET 4.0 in VS 2010) via the TFS Build server. But in my solutions I have also a WCF RIA project which contains linked files because they are used somewhere else also and there is no possibility to add a reference to a general .NET binary in WCF/Silverlight.
Everything builds without any problem on my development machine but when I check it all in, create a standard build definition and run that build definition I get the following problem. The linked files have usings (UsingNamespace for example) to other projects that are also build by us and build before the WCF/Silverlight but the following error pops up while building through TFS Build server:
The type or namespace 'UsingNamespace' could not be found (are you
missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)'
Is there any solution for this problem that I looked over?
EDIT 1
Just tried to set the Copy to Output Directory propertie of the linked files to Copy Always but this still gives me the same error as I was expecting. The problem is that the linked file is placed somewhere that it can use the usings but the WCF RIA service cannot access/find that using.
EDIT 2
Just tried out my local test TFS where I can do what I want and there I made a build definition with just the solutions needed to make that the project with the linked files builds. This worked without any problem. Then I tried the same on our TFS server with a new build definition that has the same solutions as on my test TFS and here it did not work. The only difference that I know for sure is that my test TFS is TFS 2012 Update 1 and that my production TFS does not have the update 1 yet. I'll try to install it next week.
EDIT 3
I've just updated our production TFS to Update 1 but it is still not working with my temporary build definition which only contains the projects that are needed to build the silverlight application with the linked files. The 2 workspaces are the same on both server and the projects to build are also the same.
You need to specify the workspace information in the Build Definition for the build to use. The workspaces are what the build process copies from source control to the build server. If you don't have everything in the build server's workspace, it can't build properly.
The Source Control Folder in the workspace tab is the location of the files you need from TFS. The Build Agent Folder is a relative path from the build server's pre-defined base location. You'll usually use $(SourceDir)\Folder to specify the "Folder" that your build process needs.
This sounds like an $(Outdir) problem. A build definition in TFS automatically overrides the Bin folder. All Binaries are redirected to the bin folder upon compile. Sounds to me that you are using a mixture of project references and file references. The file references are probably what is causing your build failures.
Example if you compile in the same build the following solutions
Solution1.sln (TFS Build Pass)
project1.csproj
project2.csproj (references project 1)
Solution2.sln (TFS Build Failure)
project3.csproj (references binary output of project 1)
Expectations from TFS out of the box without customizing your workflow is that this simple build will fail. The reason is that in your development box all projects produce output to one destination while in a tfs build your projects will build to $(Outdir).
Some Things to try
Simple (best practice in my view)
Create 1 solution and use project references instead of file references.
Complex
Build using MSBuild project files
Modify your windows workflow to not override the $(Outdir)
Copy the binaries after a build is complete.
Best practice on Automating Builds
Build from command line
Build from cmd a NON vs2010 command line.
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe FullpathtoSolutionFile.sln
Cheers!
Apparently there was just missing the WCF RIA services V1.0 SP2 on the TFS server. If that was installed the problem was solved.

Using Octopack on a TFS build with a website + windows service

I have a website, a windows service, and some shared class libraries in a single Visual Studio solution. I use Octopack on both the website and windows service, and on my machine these builds work as expected.
When using the TFS Build Server, the website nuget package is generated as expected, but the windows service nuget package contains all files from the website, as well as the service. E.g. it includes the _PublishedWebsites folder as well.
This is because TFS uses a single location to build projects.
What is the best way around this?
I know this question has since been closed, but I cam across this issue and solved it in a different way.
My solution is compromised of a number of websites and windows services and had the same issue of the OctoPack created nuget packages including all the solution assemblies from the 'pooled' output folder when building with Team Build. The reason the nuget packages get all the assemblies is OctoPack uses the outdir msbuild argument as the location to include assemblies from.
The way I got around it was to use the msbuild argument GenerateProjectSpecificOutputFolder=true. This instructs Team build to create a folder for each project in your output folder in the same way Visual Studio uses the bin folders under each project when building locally.
My build definition msbuild arguments looks like:
/p:GenerateProjectSpecificOutputFolder=true;RunOctoPack=true;OctoPackPublishPackageToFileShare=\\<NugetServer>
I currently just push the packages onto a shared folder but the OctoPackPublishPackageToHttp and OctoPackPublishApiKey parameters can also be used.
The benefit of this solution over the one above is you don't need to specify the files to include the nuget package.
Hope this helps someone.
I ended up using this nuget package to ensure the console app built to a seperate directory on the TFS server.
https://nuget.org/packages/PublishedApplications/2.1.0.0
I then had to specify in the nuspec file, which files should be included for the console app. e.g
This works and I can now deploy using Octopus deploy.
The downside of this apporach is that the PublishedApplications build only works on the TFS build server, so I can't build the project locally in release mode. Still looking on how to overcome this.

Creating an automated build fails due to a so called missing namespace

I am really new to TFS 2010 automated builds.
I am trying to setup an automated build for a project I am working on. Locally if I build the project it compiles as I expect it to without any errors.
If I trigger my build definition the build fails telling me that one of my .cs files is missing a namespace for a referenced project.
I have checked the reference and it's set to copy local, is there another reason why my build server doesn't think that the .dll is there?
Any pointers would be great!
My guess is that you are referencing a DLL that you have on your local machine, but that doesn't exist on the build server. My suggestion is looking at the build server build log and looking for any build warnings about unable to find references.
Chances are you need to add the DLL's to TFS and update the project references to reference the relative path in the source tree.

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