I try to build a website app. using TFS 2010 automatic builds with a custom build definition template. The build fails when tries to copy the dll references to the Bin folder:
\Lib\AjaxControlToolkit.Binary.NET4\AjaxControlToolkit.dll" to "..\Portal\Portal.Web\Bin\AjaxControlToolkit.dll". Access to the path '..\Portal\Portal.Web\Bin\AjaxControlToolkit.dll' is denied.
The application is a website and not a web application. In the LIB folder I keep all 3rd party dlls used by the website(such as the ajaxcontroltoolkit) Also both Lib and Bin folders are added to the source control.
The problem that the folder structure you made to and stored in the TFS not correct, because the bin folder should not be stored on the TFS, and the third party libraries should stored in a shared binaries folder, so you will need to adjust your folder structure in the TFS and in your local.
For more information see this link:
P&P TFS Guide
Related
I am using TFS 2015 for creating builds of application. I am able to create build template for web application as web application have both .sln and .proj.
But for Websites, I only have .sln file and no .proj.
How can I create Build definition in TFS 2015 for website having only .sln file?
As #Cece said, the answer is yes, you can run the MSBuild on the server without a .csproj.
I am assuming that your project is not running on the final version of the .Net Framework. In your case I suggest you to make this change
https://stackoverflow.com/a/42493822/819153
Then you should copy all the files from the PrecompiledWeb folder, and there you should find your .sln
Sometimes there are vb/cs projects that I have seen that they do not come with a project file, csproj or vbproject. They run with the .NET Framework 2.0. For those, you can create a build definition just to compile the .sln, but when you deploy the application, you need to copy the entire PrecompiledWeb folder to the IIS folder on your server. Try to add the task that has the option copy and publish and put all the changes to your server.
Check the privilege of the folder where you want to put the files, and be sure that the agent that is running the builds on the TFS has access READ/WRITE access to the server folder.
In your case, please check the .sln file, inside of it you should have a TargetPath, by default is PrecompiledWeb, but sometimes when you run the msbuild on the tfs you end with an error saying that the PrecompiledWeb can't be on the same tree of your solution, what you need to do then is putting a level up of your solution folder
Debug.AspNetCompiler.TargetPath = "..\..\PrecompiledWeb\YourProject"
Then on your CopyTask you need to change the CopyRoot directory, if you made any transformation before your build step to the webconfig, those transformations will be reflected on the PrecomiledWeb\YourProject. All the files in that folder should be deployed to the server folder path.
Lets say that you have this structure in your Branch
Branch/MyProject, then after you compile the source code on the TFS, your precompiled folder will be stored at the same level of your project on the agents folder. Please see the picture below to get the idea how to copy the files from the PrecompiledWeb.
The answer is Yes. You can create a build definition for a WebSite project by specifying the .sln file.
In my solution I have a basic ASP.NET MVC website and a Wix Project. To identify the files that need installed I'm using Heat (a Wix component) to index the build output. This is part of a post-build event. It works perfectly on my local machine when building in Visual Studio 2015.
My problem occurs when checked-in and the CI (TFS Build) builds it. The differences are:
The contents of the bin folder is placed directly in the build folder
The rest of the website is placed under a new _PublishedWebsites folder
This means many of the references get broken. For example when dropping the _PublishedWebsites folder into IIS breaks (as .net cannot locate the contents of Bin)
After much research on the subject, and many attempts to pass MSBuild parameters, I'm reaching the end of my efforts.
Is there a way for a build in TFS to leave file locations intact without copying and creating new folders?
If not what is the recommended way to get a deployment ready site (in a single folder) from TFS?
Adding a Copy Files task to copy bin folder to $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\_PublishedWebsites, check the screenshot below:
This is a winform application.
All dlls, exe and some other extension files are copied to the StartupProject\bin through the post build events(VS post-build).
On TFS Server, the project has 2 subfolders: bin and src.(bin contains required dlls, but other extensions are missing -.png, .dat, .xslx).
On the server, the post build copied files appear under the StartupProject\bin, but they are not copied to TFSFolder\bin.
How can I force copy all the StartupProj/bin to the TFSFolder\bin?
Team Build use a different directory layouts from Visual Studio builds. All Binaries go in a single folder for any project built, so references are automatically solved and it is easy to copy the DLL to the final Drop folder.
You should use $(OutDir) MSBuild variable to properly reference the binaries directory in VS and TFS builds. See Is there a single MSBuild and TFSBuild variable that will point to where the binaries are? for some details.
If you need to use different scripts for desktop (VS) and server (TFS) builds, use the $(BuildingInsideVisualStudio) variable as explained in TFS 2010 Build Automation and post-build event.
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.
I am able to configure our Build Server (Team Build 2008) to build our asp.net application. I've done so via
<ConfigurationToBuild Include="Debug|Mixed Platforms">
<FlavorToBuild>Debug</FlavorToBuild>
<PlatformToBuild>Mixed Platforms</PlatformToBuild>
</ConfigurationToBuild>
Problem though, the asp.net assets(eg. script folders, imgs, etc.) are not copied to the deployment folder. Folder(_PublishedWebsites) only contains the binaries references of the app plus the pre-compiled web services.
Is there a way to include said folders/files to the deployment folder?
Thanks
Note: Using Website Projects (WSP)
I was able to make this work, and factors included the way our project was checked in to our source control.
Since we're using WSP, the assemblies refrenced are copied to the bin folder, unfortunately devs checked everything in (including this) and TFS cannot overwrite the same files since TFS marked everyfile(not for edit) as read only. The resolution is to remove those .DLLs in the bin and just check in the .refresh files and let the compiler copy the actual .DLLS to the bin.
The aspnet_compiler has problems with WSP as it works well with project files(ie WAP) and that the references of physical(debug/release) of the sln file confuses it (eg ......\webappfolder). The resolution is to make(hand editing the sln file) the Debug.AspNetCompiler.PhysicalPath and Release.AspNetCompiler.PhysicalPath point to ".\webappfolder\" instead of the previous so that aspnet_compiler will be able to actually go to that folder and compile.
Make sure in the tfsbuild.proj you have the same setting (depending on the release or debug) above