I have a team city build configuration , which picks up data from bit bucket and packages it to transfer to udeploy. There is no code build process , it is just simple package and transfer process. All i want is that my team city build configuration should pick files only which are newly committed and never been picked up in previous team city builds. How do i configure this build component to enable this feature.Appreciate you help !
Checkout the Configure and Run Your First Build documentation. The steps you will need to pay attention to are:
Setting the VCS Root. This is how Team City will know when source code
changes.
Automatic Build Trigger. Even though you are not going to
build code, you will trigger your "build" steps on changes in this
repository.
Configure your "build" steps to do whatever packaging
logic you need. You can add a deployment configuration to deploy the packaged product at this point.
Related
I'm looking for advice on the best approach to setup TeamCity/Octopus.
Currently I have multiple branches in TFS2015 - dev, main and release (currently we create a release branch for each release).
Our procedure is to develop in dev and deploy to dev environment. When we are ready for testing we merge from dev to main and deploy to test from main. When happy we create a release branch and deploy to live from the release branch. This is a manual process.
Hotfixes are done on the release branch and deployed to live. We then merge back to main/dev.
I'm totally new to this and so far in a VM playground I've setup TFS2015, TeamCity and Octopus and can check-in to TFS, build/create package on TeamCity and deploy this pack from Octopus. But...
I'm unsure how I should setup TeamCity and Octopus to work with multiple branches? Multiple projects for each branch and generate different artifacts?
When I do this for real I have a TFS VM, I plan on installing TeamCity and Octopus on this along with the build agent. Is this a bad idea? Should I create a new VM just for TM and Octopus?
Any advice or best practice would be appreciated.
Although your question is good in scope, but a good answer must cover many details to be complete.
Let me try to point out the main areas that you will need to further investigate and configure.
TeamCity
A VCS root can be configured to listen to multiple branches via a branch specification
A VCS root can contain multiple projects/solutions and these can be built in multiple steps within TeamCity.
Given that Team City does not support conditional build steps, you will need a different strategy to allow you to vary build steps (and parameters) per release channels / environments.
My recommend approach is to split up the builds into a build definition per release channel (target environment).
Dev and Feature branches could share a single build definition.
Master and Hotfix branches can share a single build definition since they both publish to staging/production environments.
Release branches will need a separate build definition and publish to QA/Testing environment.
This gives you fine grained control over parameter and configurations of each release channel. build a debug version of your app from Dev branch for example at major version 3, while build a release version from Master branch with major version 2.
Every build definition will have a step to publish its artefacts/packages to Octopus Deploy, and specify the channel of which the artifacts belong to.
Octopus Deploy
In Octopus Deploy, define the channels to reflect the release channels, that also reflect your branching model.
Develop, Test, Release are my standard goto channels
Each channel can enforce a different Lifecycle to limit the environments that a channel can deploy to and how an application progresses through your overall ALM cycle.
I know this is not a complete answer. but it is a good start that I hope can help you refine your question to more specific technical details.
We're having somewhat similar CI setup requirements except TFS. In our case workflow for most projects is: GitHub -> TeamCity -> Octopus Deploy.
So I'm not sure about multi-branch setup with TFS, but in case with GitHub repos it's pretty easy to configure in TeamCity. You just have to specify branch-related settings in your VCS root (see Branch configuration). When you have configured that, TeamCity will let you run build's for every specified branch separately and will display build statuses for every branch nicely.
In Octopus we use Channels feature to split workflows of releases coming from different branches. That means we have channel-per-branch convention for the projects, so that TeamCity is pushing packaged releases from particular branch (in our case it's develop and master) into it's respective channel in Octopus (see Channels in Octopus).
Probably you can setup all the services on single machine but imho it's not the best practice to do performance-wise and scalability-wise.
Off course I don't know you code etc but I think you should step away from merging from dev to test and then creating a version from test. That way you essentially are building a different application compared to the one you were having on dev. Once you merge from test to production and build your application from there, you are releasing a build you haven't been testing.
You should strive for a flow in which you build once and deploy multiple times. So, build one package which you promote from dev to test to production.
Off course you can have a production branch on which you could fix bugs etc. The Channels feature in Octopus works great for scenario's like that.
So answering my own question (sorry), the approach I ended up taking was to simplify my branches and configure TeamCity/Octopus like so...
Branching Strategy
I've moved from
--dev
--main
--release
----release1
----release2
to
--master
--release
----release1
----release2
Master is where most of the devs do their work, when we are ready for a release we have a cut-off point and merge master into a new release branch.
The release branch is deployed to test and any fixes from testing are made on the release branch.
When testing is complete we deploy to live/production from this branch.
This means that the binaries we have tested are exactly the same as the ones we deploy to live/production.
Teamcity
In TeamCity master is automatically built each time a check-in occurs. Then the package is pushed to Octopus. Octopus acts as a repository in this case. TeamCity also creates the release on Octopus. So it should be checkin->build->create release->deploy.
To do this, I have one VCS Root and have a build configuration called Build-Master. This uses the checkout rules to ensure I'm only using the master branch. I use the Ocotpus packaging to build the package then use the OctopusDeploy runner in TeamCity to create a release automatically and deploy to the dev servers.
Release is different. I want to deploy to the test servers manually rather than each time a check-in occurs. When happy promote this to the live production servers.
Any fixes from test will be made to the release branch and deployed to test.
When testing is complete we promote to live and any hotfixes are made on the release branch. Obviously all fixes/hotfixes are merged down to master.
So, in TeamCity to achieve this I have a build configuration called Build-Release. Again, I use the checkout rules to ensure I'm dealing with the correct release branch.
The build creates a package using OctoPack, however this time it's not pushed to Octopus.
Octopus
Octopus has a project specifically for deploying master to our dev servers, for example projectnamehere-dev.
In Octopus, I have a separate project for Test/Prod. I've setup an external feed which points at TeamCity so I can pickup the package created in TeamCity. This is setup in Library->External Feeds.
So, to deploy to test. I create the release branch in TFS and give it a version number, 1,2,3 etc. I then change the Build-Release build config to point at this new branch. Change the version number.
Then in Octopus, I create a release, select this package and deploy to test. Any fixes from testing are made on this release branch. I just build the package again and create a new release and choose the new package.
When testing is complete, in Octopus I just promote the last release to the live production servers.
Channels in Octopus are used on the two projects because they have different life cycles. I also created two new life cycles, the default is dev/test/prod. I created just a dev and then test/prod.
Hope this helps.
In the version control settings -> vcs -> Branch Specifications: "*" ("This will do all branch, filter as needs be" e.g. +:refs/heads/master +:refs/heads/develop)
enter image description here
Octopus doesn't handle branches, it only deploys, you can however use their rest api, so for example, if test pass in develop then call the octopus rest api to create a new release and deploy.
I am new to team city and i just started using the existing team city configuration. I have a requirement to pass the build number (ex:- 7.6.0.4) generated in a build configuration (01 Build Services Installer) to another build configuration (03 deploy installers). The Build number is generated at run time so it will change for every build. How can i pass this build number to the one of the build step in 'deploy installers' configuration? I am using powershell to run my script and i need to pass this build number to this powershell script.
Thanks in advance.
Team City Screen shot
The regular way to achive this in TeamCity would be to define a Dependency between the builds, then you can access all Parameters from previous builds.
Define a Snapshot dependency between "Build Services Installers" and "Deploy Installers" (if not already done)
You can now access all Parameters of the first build in "Deploy Installers" by typing %dep. - Autocomplete will tell you the rest.
We have several projects undergoing, and there are dependencies relationships among them. All projects makes up a final software.
We set up a DEV build environment to do snapshots build by using LASTEST dependencies. Any change will trigger a snapshot build (jekins job) and all dependent's snapshot build will be triggered too, and so if any changes break some project, that project's own build will notify the owner.
The question is about the release. The DEV build is continuous, and we want to release EVERY project against certain timestamp when it was a GREEN dev build across all projects.
How to get such release process setup?
thanks.
jenkins provides some Post-Build-Actions. You can use them to publish/archive every successfully built artifact to whereever you want.
Your Release-Job can take all the artifacts and deploy them. So you're sure all artifacts are from GREEN builds and is also independent from all the continuous jobs.
If you want to be really cool, do some smoke tests (e.g. is database connection working, external APIs working, etc) in the Release-Job as well.
best,
marco
We are using bamboo as our integration server. During each build it produces binary packs of our products. Some of the built artifacts then goes in to QA.
Is there a way to retain build artifacts of a certain build job number, irrespective of the global build expire configuration. For an example, at some point we identify one of the built artifacts as release candidate.
The QA should be able to download that specific pack even after one weeks time. Right now we are copying the build artifacts from CI server to some other machine. It is a script, but still it is a manual process.
In Hudson there is an option called 'keep this build forever'.
Depending on your version this is possible by applying a label to it. Under a plan's configuration on the "Miscellaneous" tab, you can set a label which can then be used to prevent a build from expiring.
For example, our system has builds that can get labelled "SaveBuild" which then prevents their expiry.
I've started using TeamCity personal builds, via the new Git remote run feature in TeamCity 6.5. Doing a single build works fine; I have a project that compiles from source, and I gave it a Branch Remote Run trigger.
However, it looks like TeamCity only triggers the one project that has the Branch Remote Run trigger applied. I have several unit test projects, set up in a chain with Finish Build triggers, and none of these get run. Furthermore, if I try to start a custom build of one of these unit test projects, I can't use the artifacts from my personal build: I can only pick artifacts from one of the 'official' builds.
Can I get TeamCity personal builds to work with build chains?
With the setup that you have (snapshot dependencies and finish build triggers), you can achieve build chaining by submitted your personal changes to the builds you are looking to trigger. For example, if you have projects A and B where B depends on A - run the remote build against project B and A will be triggered first and B will be added to the queue. Both of these builds will have your personal changes.
If you are using the TeamCity Visual Studio plugin you can select which builds you want to send your changes to and you just need to tick the box for B instead of A.
The finished build trigger won't be fired, but the build chaining means that A must be built first.
More info - http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/TCD7/Build+Chain
(You have tagged TeamCity 6.5, but 7 has now been released so I have included the documentation for the newer version)
I suppose you should setup your chain not with Finish Build trigger, but with "Snapshot dependencies" feature of TeamCity. And, setup artifacts dependency basing on the snapshots.
Please read about snapshot dependencies in TeamCity here.