I have started using the preview of Microsoft Team Foundation Service (TFS in the cloud, henceforth TFService) for a small project, and I'm currently setting up builds using the online build service included with TFService.
What I want to do is to add an installer of some kind. I've previously worked with InstallShield Limited Edition, WIX and Inno Setup and would like to keep using one of those if possible.
I've previously integrated Inno Setup as part of a build process (TFS 2010). This involved installing Inno Setup on the build computer, and adding a custom build task for running an inno setup script. The last part should be possible with TFService as well, because it's possible to create custom build process templates.
However, I realize that installing anything such as Inno Setup or InstallShield will not work with TFService, since it's not possible to install any 3rd party software on the build computer (it's just a cloud service running on some unknown virtual computer which I cannot access).
So my question is; is there a way to automatically create an installer as part of a build process running on TFService? For example, is the build service capable of building installshield projects out of the box (there's a license included with Visual Studio after all)? Or are there other ways to do this?
I have some experience with this trying to get WiX and InstallShield to work with Microsoft TFS Preview cloud service using their managed build agents. On these agents, you don't have administrator rights and you can't install software.
This currently rules out InstallShield which must be installed.
It is however possible to check the WiX binaries into source control and pull them down as part of your build.
WiX uses .wixproj files (MSBuild) to define their project compile activities. This references a targets file and other properties ( referencing registry values ) that won't exist when you deploy this way. A small bit of hacking will get all of these properties to resolve to workable values.
The one problem you may still have though (and I'm thinking TFS managed build environment ) is that you may have to configure your projects to skip MSI ICE validation suites. On the build machines, I played on the windows installer service was outright disabled and this prevented the tests from running.
Related
Actually, I was working with manual build and release concept and Now I have to start the automation with TFS2013, so Please suggest how to start the Build automation with TFS2013, I am getting confused while the merging from a development branch to QA branch.
XAML builds are deprecated. We strongly recommend that you upgrade TFS2013 and migrate to the new build system as explained in this official tutorial.
However, if you have to use TFS2013, then to enable XAML builds you must connect a XAML build controller to your collection. See Configure and manage your build system.
You could also customize your XAML templates or added custom tasks as your requirement.
If you want a step by step build/deploy process and tutorial, I would suggest you take a look at this wonderful blog-- Automated Web Deployment and Team Build Using TFS 2013
I am trying to deploy a wpf application with an embedded rdlc report using clickonce. The previous version of report viewer (in VS2015) was built-in so it was easy and convenient to use and I had no issues deploying this project.
Now since easy and convenient is not the goal anymore, in vs2017 after a failed deploy with an error message that gave me absolutely no help, I have come to realize that apparently you have to install 2 additional VS extensions and a report viewer runtime on every machine where an app uses and rdlc reports (feels like crystal reports all over again) and you have to exclude the automatically included Chinese localization files in your clickonce deployment (which cause a manifest parse error). Anyway, the instructions on MS website say that click once should have a "Microsoft Visual Studio Report Viewer" prerequisite option to select as requirement of installing your app. However, after installing the runtime on my development machine, restarting visual studio, this option is not available. Does anyone know how to get this to work?
I used Project|Manage NuGet Packages to add this package to my project.
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.ReportViewer.Runtime.Common/12.0.2402.15
If you search with Manage NuGet Packages, there's quite a few ReportViewer related items. I'm not sure which ones are appropriate to your WPF app.
Anyway, the deployment project picked up the various ReportViewer assembly dependencies and everything seems to be working without the EXE redist from MS.
I come from Java world. I was looking for Apache Maven alternative in C++ world. I think I found the correct project. I have few questions and have not managed to find an answer.
Is it possible to manage local repository. Let's say, I work on 5 similar but different projects and this project share mostly the same dependencies. Will each project have it's own dependencies stored inside each project or is there a "system" wide (per user) local repository where dependencies are stored?
Is it possible to "publish" only to local folder so other project can "see" dependent block or it has to go over bii internet repository?
Or am I wrong - about how bii works.
Looks nice project. Keep up the good work.
Right now, projects act as virtualenvs, each project contains and build its dependencies. This is intended for fast evolving libraries. Imagine you have 5 similar projects all depending on the same library A, version 0. While working on one of those projects you can make a modification to A and publish a new version, an API breaking modification. The other 4 projects will continue depending on version 0, and will not break. When you move to those projects you can easily update their dependencies and fix the breakages.
You can share the same library among different projects straight ahead with sym links if working in linux, not working by now in windows.
For very stable, large projects that can be installed system-wide, it could be more convenient to depend on the installed version. CMake allows this very easily via FindXXX(). You can install system wide the binaries with CMake install, or you can even use CMake scripts or biicode python hooks to automatically download and install system wide those libraries. Check, e.g.:http://www.biicode.com/diego/opencvex, OpenCV is managed with a biicode python hook and installed system wide.
At this moment there is no "local" publication, and if you want to share that way among projects, yes, you have to go over the biicode cloud servers, simply with "bii publish".
However, we are transitioning to open-source. We will probably release first the client code, then we will release a server that could be deployed in-house. Not implemented yet, but a future feature is that this server could act as a proxy to the cloud one, you can publish to the local instance, but read from the cloud one. With a local installation of this server, you will be able to publish locally.
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've a question regarding Build Servers for .NET Projects. Currently I'm using TeamBuild in conjunction w/ TFS 2010 to do automated builds in the .NET world. Some older projects are built using plain old MSBuild scripts.
To get rid of the administrative effort I'm currently moving my sources to github. Github offers, as many other sites service hooks to trigger build servers for doing automated builds such as CI or nightly builds.
Sure I could use TeamCity OnPremise and dynamically create Build Agents in Windows Azure using VMRole and Virtual Disks, but I think this hybrid solution is a little bit moronic.
So what are your thoughts about the following architectural idea?
Let's say you're using github as source control platform. When commiting sources to your repository an Azure WebRole hosting a WCF Service will be triggered.
The WebRole itself will just use the Azure API to fire up a new instance of a custom Azure VMRole.
The Azure VMRole itself will use some kind of buildscript such as Rake or MSBuild to have as few developer tools installed on the build agent as needed. After building the entire project the artifacts will be published to Azure BlobStorage and the WebRole hosting the WCF service will be called again, but right now the Azure WebRole is going to terminate the BuildAgent.
While using such a setup you could minimize the costs for the build agent and build nearly any kind of project as far as you're able to install the required element for the build by using PowerShell.
So in bottom line: what are your thoughts on this architecture? Other Ideas? Is there an existing service offering such a solution?
Thorsten
have you looked at https://appharbor.com ? I know a number of people who are using it to do exactly what you are doing.
Check out Team Foundation Service as it can do the following:
Continuous Delivery to Azure
Deploy to production on Windows Azure with two clicks from Visual Studio, or automatically as part of your build process.
Just found this one http://www.appveyor.com/ AppVeyor is also free for OpenSource projects.