I am working on setting up a new build server using Team City 2017.2.
Our source control (TFS 2015) is structured like this:
Trunk
Branches
Branch1
DEV
UAT
Branch2
DEV
UAT
etc...
I have setup a build that is working using a vs root pointed at a specific DEV branch and Trunk.
Each new project gets its own branch that I create in TFS at the project's start. Coding takes place DEV. We want to setup the Team City build so that it automatically will build the branch that has a check in. A build.proj file is what controls what code the build server builds in the branch.
We are trying to avoid having to manually maintain a seprate VSC roots and builds for each branch as branches are created and merged to trunk/deleted as projects are completed.
I am having trouble figuring out if this is possible and if so how to do it. Can someone point me in the right direction on this?
Thanks in advance,
-Wayne
Related
In TDS Classic, is there a way to vary the "Item Deployment" property of an item by build? The use case is: I have test content that should be "Always Update" for Dev but it should be "Deploy Once" on QA
Is this possible? If not, whats the best practice around these scenarios?
Thanks
One simple way to handle this is to create a separate TDS project dedicated to DEV related content that's set to Always Update.
In your build configuration you can allow for the generation of multiple update packages. The last step is ensuring that the DEV update package is never installed beyond DEV. How you handle that will depend on how you're installing the update packages upstream. If it's a manual installation, then there's no problem. If it's an automatic installation, you'll need to exclude the DEV update package.
The approach above has the added benefit of being able to easily sync in your local environment very quickly and stay in sync with other developers who will also keep that developer TDS project up to date..
Im trying to figure out how to chain multiple 'promotions' (by a user clicking) whilst ensuring that ever build in the chain is not queued. By current setup is as follows, NOTE as my application is a white label the configuration described below is repeated for every site.
Build & Test - Creates zipped artifact
Deploy to Testing - Has artifact and snapshot dependency
Deploy to Staging - Has artifact and snapshot dependency
Deploy to Production Has artifact dependency
When promoting to production i want to do this across all websites (without having to manually click promote on each build).
I am currently trying the following strategy, to set the 'deploy to production' build to have a Artifact dependency, without a snapshot dependency so it doesn't queue down the chain. I have set the artifact to depend on the 'Build & Test' configuration to gain access to the zipped project and i have set it to build with a specific build number referencing a parameter in the production build.
After doing some googleing i found out that i am able to get the stagings build number using the rest api as follows:
http://teamcity_url/httpAuth/app/rest/builds/buildType:build_configuration_id/resulting-properties/build.number
And this works great, however i don't understand how i can get this value into the parameter?
Also i dont know if my approach is correct? is there a better way?
Set up the artifact dependencies chronologically (Build -> Test -> Staging -> Production) and all your snapshot dependencies to Build & Test. Depending on exact needs you might have a snapshot dependency on both Build and the one your artifact dependency is on.
Also make sure you enable "Do not run new build if there is a suitable one. This should keep it from queuing down the chain without intention.
Using the build chain tab will be important because the main project page only shows the last build ran. So clicking run from there will que the chain because you are asking for a new build, even though to you it might feel like your asking for the next step to be ran. The build chain tab helps keep things clear.
I am trying to improve our general automation process. We use VS2012 and TFS2012.
Here is what I want to happen upon checkin to our CI branch:
BUILD
Build the selected projects / solutions as configured in the build definition settings.
Generate a deployment package that can be used to deploy the websites (without having to rebuild the entire project again)
Generate a nuget package that can later be published (without having to rebuild the entire project again, i need the dlls to match the symbols created from indexing so we can debug them)
TEST - IF AND ONLY IF BUILD WAS SUCCESSFUL
Run all configured unit tests.
DEPLOY - IF AND ONLY IF ALL UNIT TESTS PASS This is to prevent breaking changes entering our development environment
Take deployment package from (1.2) and publish it to it's intended environment (hopefully configured using Publishing Profiles and transforms)
PUBLISH - IF AND ONLY IF ALL UNIT TESTS PASS
Take nuget package from (1.3) and publish it to our private nuget gallery
I don't need a full tutorial (although that would be awesome) for the entire process, but more how to go about integrating it.
For instance:
Should I use msbuild on a wrapper project?
How do I deal with creating the packages upon build on the TFS build server?
How can I enforce the "IF AND ONLY IF ALL UNIT TESTS PASS" constraints?
What is the best / easiest way to perform the deployment /publishing after as part of the build.
This is the process we want to use and any help is realising this is very much appreciated.
And I'm sure many other people are interested in how to set about integrating this style of process.
Also if it's relevant most solutions have a mix of shared dll projects, websites / apis, and unit tests. One of the reasons I want this process is to be able to split them up and modularise our large dlls into smaller isolated units, which would be to unmanageable ATM without this auto publish mechanism.
Thanks,
Gary.
BUILD Build the selected projects / solutions as configured in the build definition settings. Generate a deployment package that can be
used to deploy the websites (without having to rebuild the entire
project again)
This is out of the box, add deployment profile to your projects, call them 'Release'
Add the following to your MSBuild Arguments
/p:DeployOnBuild=true;PublishProfile=Release
you don't have to use Release, as long as your Publish Profiles match what you put in the MSBuild arguments
This will generate the deployment files as part of your build (MSDEPLOY)
Generate a nuget package that can later be published (without having to rebuild the entire project again, i need the dlls to match the symbols created from indexing so we can debug them)
See Nugetter on code plex http://nugetter.codeplex.com/
TEST - IF AND ONLY IF BUILD WAS SUCCESSFUL Run all configured unit
tests.
Should be out of the box, but you can change the build template to fail the build should compilation be unsucessful, if this suits your needs better.
DEPLOY - IF AND ONLY IF ALL UNIT TESTS PASS This is to prevent
breaking changes entering our development environment Take deployment
package from (1.2) and publish it to it's intended environment
(hopefully configured using Publishing Profiles and transforms)
PUBLISH - IF AND ONLY IF ALL UNIT TESTS PASS Take nuget package from
(1.3) and publish it to our private nuget gallery
See Nugetter on codeplex as listed above
I am starting to prepare a roadmap for our release process. We are at present using tortoise svn and ant for building source. I am considering implementing continuous integration and would like to know right direction for the choices below:
Firstly, the present process is such that a developer would work on a file, commits that file directly to repo. Others would run the tortoise update command to pull in the required changes. The same process is followed on the build server where in would update the source code, build and then deploy to qa and production servers. However, this process lacks control of repo since during an update, unwanted code is also pulled in case two developers worked on the same file fixing two different issues. One approved by qa and other rejected. How can i overcome this scenario.
Secondly, apart from source we have a bunch of other files such as xml files, css,js etc . How do i automate deployment of these files? I have configured cruisecontrol on my local machine and it works fine when it comes to executing a build but now sure how to handle other files since updating those files in production seems risky and error prone. Any suggestion in this would be really helpful.
You could try integrating PowerShell with CruiseControl, our team has CC fire off the build process and then PowerShell to copy the resulting project files (code and others) to production or a test site or wherever.
I'd suggest to deal with the lack of repository control that you create a candidate Branch off your Trunk and designate that as your Integration code. Once it's settled and necessary changes have been committed or pulled, promote it to Regression for further testing. Then once that testing is successful, promote it to Production.
In this process your developers wouldn't be committing to Production directly, but instead through an iterative process a new production repository will result, whose changes can then be reintegrated into Trunk so the process can start anew for the next release.
After my first question, id like to have a confirmation about the best git workflow in my case.
I have a single django project, hosted at github, and differents clones with each his own branch : customerA, customerB, demo... (think websites)
Branches share the same core but have differents data and settings (these are in gitignore)
When i work on CustomerA branch, how should i replicate some bug corrections to the other deployments ?
When i create a new general feature, i create a special branch, then merge it into my master. Then, to deploy on the 'clients', i merge the master branch into the customer branch. Is it the right way ? or should i rebase ?
# from customerA branch
git fetch origin master
git merge origin master
Also, i have created a remote branch for each customer so i can backup the customers branches to github.
It looks a very classic problem but i guess i dont use git the right way
Thanks.
Ju.
I would have a single project repo at a well-known place containing a master branch with the common code, and branches for specific deployments (e.g. customer/A customer/B demo).
Then I would have checkouts from each of these branches for each customer, for the demo server, and so on. You can let these pull automatically from their respective branch with a commit hook on the single project repo.
Every developer would have their local copy of the project repo, do local work, and then push stuff back to the single project repo.
The challenge will be to maintain the branches diverging from master and doing the regular merges so the diversion do not grow over time.
I have seen this solution describe somewhere in much more detail somewhere on the web, but I could not find it quickly again. Some blog post on using git for a staging and production web server, IIRC.
If the three sites share some 'core' code (such as a Django app) you should factor that core out into its own repo and use git submodules to include it in the other projects, rather than duplicating it.
I would have a repo called project-master or something like that and a repo for each client. Then, when you have code you need to be available to those client repos, you pull from the project-master to that repo.
Don't separate the projects in branches, separate them into different repositories.
Make the "common" code generic enough so that costumerA's copy of the common code is exactly the same as costumerB's copy of the common code.
Then, you don't have to pull or merge anything. When you update the common code, both costumerA and costumerB will get the update automagically (because they use the same common code).
By "common" code: I'm referring to the package/series-of-apps that power the websites you're developing.
I'm assuming costumerA and costumerB repositories would only include things like site-specific settings and templates.
The key here is making the "common" code generic: don't let costumerA use a "slightly modified version" of the "common" code.
Also, I'd suggest using a deployment mechanism that doesn't rely on git. git is a great source code management tool; but it's not designed (AFAIK) to be a deployment tool.