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.
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'm working for a company where we're using on-prem TFS for dev and continuous build, however our environments are hosted on AWS. We need to setup a continuous deployment pipeline from our build servers to AWS.
Any recommendation for an enterprise continuous deployment tool for such an environment? We've already done a POC with Octopus Deploy. Is it possible to set up a continues deployment pipeline using just Microsoft tools? Any pointers and documentation with examples would be highly appreciated.
Octopus Deploy is indeed a good choice. Octopus Deploy and TFS/VSO can work together to make automated, continuous delivery easy. For more information, see the Octopus Deploy documentation at http://docs.octopusdeploy.com/display/OD/Team+Foundation+Server
It's also possible to set up a continues deployment pipeline using just Microsoft tools. You need to use Microsoft Release Managerment.It can Run automations to deploy your app to each environment.
If you are working on vNext build, just like James mentioned, this is only support for Team Foundation Server 2015 (update 2 and above) and Visual Studio Team Services. Detail features you can refer this link:Release Management vNext
If you are working on XAML build, here is a good documentation about Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment with Team Foundation Server 2013 & VS 2013
You can easily integrate the new Release Management tools from Microsoft with TFS.
!!Release Management tools in TFS 2015 Update 2
The easy way would be to install the TFS 2015 Update 2 RC. It's fully supported by MS and works great.
http://nkdagility.com/the-high-of-release/
!!Release Management in VSTS with TFS
An alternative until Update 2 is to use VSTS Release Management Online to do the deployments from your local TFS.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudioalm/2015/11/28/deploy-artifacts-from-onprem-tfs-server-with-release-management-service/
I would recommend that you use one of the two above methods or move your TFS server to VSTS in it's entirety.
!!Release Management Server for TFS
For now the released version of RM is available for download and install. It's not as good as the new one, but also works fine.
http://nkdagility.com/create-release-management-pipeline-professional-developers/
You can do it without octopus. All you need is an EC2 based build agent with (PAT) authentication and you can deploy almost any artifact. How to do this is given in following tutorials.
How to Build a CI/CD Pipeline Using AWS CodeDeploy and Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)
(For hybrid/complex deployments, you can use this. You can deploy IIS websites, MSI packages, services, exe). The beauty of this is that with a single deployment you can deploy to both on premises and cloud environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIE0P3m9eEY
How to Integrate AWS Elastic Beanstalk with Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) or (VSTS)
(for IIS websites/batch jobs you can use this)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRLZZefLDqU
How to Integrate AWS Cloudformation with Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)
(fully infrastructure automation and manage infrastructure as code)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU93NJT0_3s
I am using TeamCity (version 9.1.5 if that matters) and I am trying to figure out how to create a trigger that deploys the project to a server. Or maybe there is a way to deploy a project to a server without using a trigger on TeamCity.
It's a very broad question, but I will share the approaches I have used in a couple of scenarios:
1) To deploy when a code checkin is performed, I have setup a build configuration that does the deployment, added the build configuration that does the compiling & packaging as a snapshot and artefact dependency which is then triggered with a Finish Build Trigger https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/TCD9/Configuring+Finish+Build+Trigger
2) To deploy at a given time of the day but only when new code has been checked in, I have setup a build configuration as above but triggered with a Schedule Trigger https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/TCD9/Configuring+Schedule+Triggers ensuring to select the dependent build in the Build Changes section.
With regards to how to perform the deployment there are many options, I have used WebDeploy for ASP.Net applications and MSI packages executed by Remote Powershell scripts for Windows Services, but other options are also available depending on the technology you have.
JetBrains provide an end to end example for ASP.Net in their on-line documentation, search for "Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure Web Sites (or IIS)"
Looking at some of the delivered SAPUI5 code on HANA I noticed that WebStorm and even RubyMine was used by some SAP developers. I have also heard that various other developers on customer sites use WebStorm for code checked into the ABAP repository.
Both the HANA and ABAP repositories technically look to be proprietary. The default method for syncing SAPUI5 code with HANA and ABAP repos seems to be using Eclipse or the Eclipsed based HANA Studio, via SAP delivered plugins installed.
I searched and couldn't find any plugins or help on how you could check in and out of HANA or ABAP repo easily not using Eclipse or Orion.
For HANA you can put Github in the middle using something like the SAP HANA Deployment Shell and on the ABAP stack you can /UI5/UI5_REPOSITORY_LOAD to manually upload, i have heard alternatives for both where developers have reverse engineered the services eclipse use by listening on the HTTP traffic or de-compiling the plugins.
My question how are others using Webstorm to develop SAPUI5 applications within a team and how do you sync your code with the SAP repository?
I use Webstorm for my UI5 development. We store the code in a GIT repository hosted through an internal Gitlab server (https://about.gitlab.com/) running on Ubuntu! You could just as easily use cloud solutions such as Gitlab or Bitbucket.
There are two ways to circumvent Eclipse and remove the need for the ABAP team repository:
(1) Use the abap program /UI5/UI5_REPOSITORY_LOAD in t-code SE38 on your Gateway ABAP stack. Just point it to your git directory and execute!
(2) Use the program /UI5/UI5_REPOSITORY_LOAD_HTTP to do the same thing from a webserver. You could imagine a scenario where you have a HTTP service that triggers the pull on SAP but we always use the first method!
Edit # 03-SEP-14
To clarify my thoughts on (2) the ideal scenario would be to implement a small post commit handler so that on a repository change it would:
Pull the changes from the repository
build the UI (i.e. perform minification/uglify on the JS & CSS) to a separate build folder (create preload files)
perform any unit tests on the code (if they exist)
if the tests pass, upload to Gateway by either:
zip the build folder and post it to a custom Gateway service (or)
call a custom gateway service to then trigger a pull of the build folder via HTTP
(Since master is always deployable :-)!)
You end up with a continuous integration platform that ensures the integrity of your code and ensures that you also deploy only the production code (always a little uncertain of deploying non-minified source code with comments etc. to a productive internet facing server..).
This method is agnostic of the IDE you use and if you do it right, also of the source code repository setup.
Hope this helps & happy developing!
Oli
At the moment, we are running our automated (not CI as such) builds via FinalBuilder via a very simple homegrown Apache interface that just launches the FB scripts on our server. (I like FinalBuilder, and will keep it, but it's CI server, FinalBuilder Server just doesn't cut it IMHO -- especially it doesn't support any "agent" concept at the moment to distribute builds across machines.)
We are doing native C++ development on Windows with a bit .NET mixed in where it's needed and makes sense.
Our current FinalBuilder scripts do everything quite well, from creating nightly builds to full releases (build / automated translation / build / unit test / create setup / put created artifacts on a network share / ...), but our webinterface, queuing abilities, user traceability and reporting is pretty limited.
I have looked around and it seems that TeamCity and Bamboo tick similar boxes, but most descriptions I can find cover only Java and/or .NET simple builds.
So my specific question is, given
several (20-30) complicated FinalBuilder Scripts that work to my satisfaction and that I will have to integrate into ("call" from) the new automation/"CI" server
Native Windows C++ and .NET projects
The actual build (= compiler invocation(s)) is done via a few Visual Studio solution files at the moment
Currently one build server machine, wishing to scale to 2-3 atm.
Using JIRA as issue tracker
using AccuRev as SCM
which tool is better suited, and why: TeamCity (currently 6.5) or Bamboo (currently 3.1).
(Note that I also hope to get some highly subjective answers on the TeamCity and Bamboo forums.)
For TeamCity side, it integrates with Jira, has AccuRev plugin, and has a good support for VisualStudio/C++ projects. It can also run arbitrary scripts.
You can trigger a build and obtain some build results via HTTP-based API. In the UI, you can see which changes have been built and in which build configurations. Easily integrate any custom HTML reports into TeamCity UI (no coding), publish artifacts.
Probably, you should try both solutions and see which one is more suitable for you (with Teamcity, you can use full-functional server for free, the only limit is number of build agents and number of build configurations).
Disclaimer: I'm a TeamCity developer
I found Bamboo more credible than TeamCity. Here are my reasons:
Those Jira plugins for VS or Eclipse are Bamboo plug-ins too. :) no extra add-ins needed.
Better support for Jira integration.
Nice user interface, like the one you used for Jira.
Ability to better integration with other Atlassian tools, such as FishEye.
Cheaper. A 10$ license will suffice your company.
More add-ons on Bamboo than TeamCity, lots of plug-ins.
For completeness' sake: I ended up using Jenkins + Finalbuilder. :-)
I worked in a similar environment using FinalBuilder for build automation, AccuRev for source control and a native windows projects.
I ended up selecting Electric Commander as the best CI solution for the job. It is possible to reuse parts of the FinalBuilder scripts and call them from Electric Commander but simply calling the FB script as one build step would result in you missing out on some of the key advantages of using Electric Commander - realtime log file processing, the ability to parallelize right down to individual step levels in Electric Commander and data collection and reporting.
Electric Commander has an API that exposes all product functionality which can be used in combination with AccuRev triggers to achieve a very flexible solution.
Disclaimer - I liked Electric Commander so much I joined the company and am currently employed by Electric Cloud.
You can try Electric Commander by going to www.electric-cloud.com and clicking on "Try It!"