We're using the hosted build agent on VSTS to build and release our ASP.NET Core code to Azure App service.
My question is: can we run WebPack to handle front-end tasks on this hosted build on VSTS or do we have to do it manually before checking the code into our repository?
Update:
I'm utilizing the new ASP.NET Core Build (Preview) template that's available on VSTS -- see below:
Here are the steps -- out of the box:
For VSTS we're working on an extension, currently it's in beta phase, you can ask for a share.
Check the VSTS marketplace.
Check this github repo.
Webpack is definitively not a first class citizen for VS2015 and VSTS. Streamlining webpack for CI/CD has been a real headache in my case, especially as webpack was introduced hastily to solve dreadful performance issues with a large monolithic SPA (ASP.NET 4.6, Kendo, 15,000 files, 2000 folders). To cut short, after trying many scenarios to make sure that freshly rebuilt bundles would end up in IIS and Azure webapp, I did a 2-pass build. The sequence of VSTS tasks is as follows: npm install global, npm install local, npm webpack install local, npm webpack install global, build pass 1, webpack, build pass 2, etc... This works with hosted and private agents, providing you supply the proper path for webpack as webpack is installed in a different location in host and in private (did not find a way to chose the webpack install location for consistency). I scorch everything before starting the build. Also need to do these in VS2015 solution : (1) unload "built" folder, and (2) Add Content Include="Built\StarStar" in project file. The "built" folder contains the bundles and should appear greyed, otherwise more bad surprises and instabilities to deal with...
Build-Pass #2 task in VSTS BUILD allows to collect the fresh bundles generated by Build-Pass #1 and includes them automatically in the package to be published.
Without a second build-pass, collecting the bundles and merging them in the zip package is a nightmare, especially when you have 15,000 files to unzip then rezip (300 ms per file!!). Did not find file-merging capability that I could readily use in VSTS.
I have my hears to the ground listening for someone coming up with a more efficient CI/CD scheme for webpack. In the meanwhile, my 2-pass-build workaround is working flawlessly, but slow indeed.
I anticipate that the advances with ASP.NET core, Angular 2 and webpack will look into solving this elegantly.
Related
I'm writing my only build scripts and setup jenkins, Jenkins provide plugins to zip the build results, meanwhile I can zip the result in my own build scripts and call that scripts from Jenkins. Which way is better?
If you are in a corporate environment where a number of teams share the same Jenkins master, each plugin you add increases the probability of a plugin failure as and when you upgrade Jenkins. In addition, a bad plugin can bring down your entire CI server. So, in a common master scenario, be very conservative on adding plugins, don't add a plugin unless it is absolutely necessary. For something as simple as creating zips, any build tool worth its salt has a task that can zip contents in a given folder. Read through Maven and Gradle for a start.
currently our process works, but it takes too much time due that the fronend Ember app needs to be build into every single environment we have ( 5 environments ). because we never know which environment will be available when we release it.
we intend to add even more environments because every developer should have his own working development environment. (because of the backend)
how we do it, is that we create a frontend build and a backend build which creates artifacts.
now the frontent build takes around 2 minutes for every environment.
ember build --env=test and ember build --env=acceptance and ember build --env=development ... and more
when the artifacts are created we then create the release picking the correct ones depending on which environment we release (this done via release pipeline).
my question is can we make a frontend ember build somehow not depending on the environment?
i would like to note that we are using azure service fabric.
I don't think there is anyway around multiple Ember builds because each one will be different (i.e. production vs. development).
You can batch together each build inside one CI build/build task and produce artifact(s) to be used in your release pipeline.
Run the following command once for each environment you have (assuming you are using Ember-CLI) sequentially in one build task.
ember build --environment={{YOUR-ENV-HERE}} --output-path="dist/{{YOUR-ENV-HERE}}/"
You can then either upload the entire dist/ folder as an artifact and scope each environment in your release pipeline to the corresponding artifact subdirectory, or you can upload each folder inside /dist as an individual artifact and scope each environment in your release pipeline to its corresponding artifact.
only the configuration it changes. basically the api endpoints
I have upgraded nexus repository from 2.x to 3.x through following path:
2.4.14 -> 3.4.0 -> 3.5.1
All nexus services were packed in docker with data directory mapped from host's. For all services I use default either sonatype/nexus or sonatype/nexus3 containers. Nexus web interface is hidden behind nginx with simple reverse proxying.
I use the nexus service with boot-cj (with no credentials) tools which manages dependencies the same way as maven. Anyway the tool first downloads nexus-maven.xml with relevant sha1 files and tries to download jars. It works fine with all 2.x I had.
I created a proxy repository against remote sonatype-snapshots repo. When I start compilation I have Could not find artifact error. I found that the meatdata files are cached but all poms and jars.
I have tried to fix it by cleaning cache with the clean_cache file trick and more rough rm -rfv /srv/nexus3/nexus-data/cache/* with no success. There are no any logs about error. Also I have checked manually that required artefact exists in the remote repository. More obvious Rebuild index button gave no solution. I do not thing it is a problem with nginx, but who knows? Also leaving overnight to run the scheduled tasks did not help.
The expected artifact is org.eclipse.rdf4j:rdf4j:pom:2.3-20170901.145510-11.
I am deploying a React app on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. I bundle the app using webpack. However, I'm slightly confused about what best practices are from the production build process. Should I build the app locally (with NODE_ENV=production) using webpack, and then just upload the resultant bundle.js file, along with all node_modules to the Elasticbeanstalk instance? Or, should I upload all the source files, and run webpack on the actual cloud AWS server during deployment?
You should never build for production locally (unless you're the only developer).
Ideally, you have a build process that gets triggered manually or automatically from a git commit which then builds your project for production for you.
By using a centralized build process, you can then be sure that all your builds are built the same way (e.g. same node version, same npm or yarn version).
Both approaches are not really good to be honest. Local building is not a best way to build anything you want to have on production. You might have packages locally that may have inpact on what you're building. Same applies to the OS your doing it on.
And, again, same applies to the building during deployment. As the name of 'deployments' stands for, it's deploying. Just placing your application setup on the server so it may serve as it is supposed to.
That's the point where all CI/CD comes in. Having those kinds of solutions guarantee that each build is done with the same steps and on the same solution stack. No difference between each build is desired, because it allows you to assume that any bug or a change comparing to the 'desing' is because of the code, not environment it was build within.
Assuming that you're the only developer here (because you're asking for such a thing), CI/CD might be definitive overkill here, so just create shell script with steps and use Docker as the environment for build, so it stays the same between each build. That's the closest to the CI/CD option you can get without a hassle.
We use maven to deploy the code changes to cq interner server / CRX Lite and the problem here is that it takes long time where the changes itself is often only one line code.
Has somebody experience with CQ5 with jetty and can give me a good Guide?
am not sure i understand the relationship with jetty (which ships as servlet container of latter versions of AEM/CQ5), but will answer to the code deployment part:
deploying a full content package (full content) should be done using
maven-content-package plugin for smaller deployments of content,
when you can't use integrated dev environments like sling eclipse dev
tools, i'd suggest you use the excellent repo command that basically zips the current folder and deploy it. I'm using it as an external tool command of intellij and it's really fast.
finally, if the deployment you're referring to is osgi deployment, maven sling plugin can help you with that (will still compile/package the whole osgi bundle though)