I'm still trying to create my first Azure Pipeline CI / CD. My CI part is working fine, my CD is also working except I cannot apply my Web.config file transformations.
Let me first show you what I have then I will ask several questions below. The build with generated artifact. I also copy manually my 3 config files.
Wen I open my WebAPI.zip file here is the path and content:
Here is my pipeline project
And the details of my staging phase:
When I run this full pipeline my config file is never transformed but I get no error. I just get a
2019-05-02T03:27:23.5778958Z ##[warning]Unable to apply transformation
for the given package.
I also have the debug log with full information but it doesn't give me much information for now. I will add it here later.
Questions
Azure Pipeline File Transformation is not working. Why?
Is it because the File Tranform task only look for config file in zip?
Is this system then just ignoring my tranformation file in root of artifact?
So I think my manual copy of config transformation file is obsolete?
How can I then add my transformation file into my zip?
In my csproj I already set all my tranformation files on Build action content, copy always, this is ignored too, is it normal?
EDIT 1
One more important question: Is it possible to simply ask the deployment system to ignore or not deploy my config file. It is not something I want to deploy every time. I like the idea I have to do it manually or from alternative deployment system. With this solution I can have some other issues if I save a version or build variable in my config file. Then is it possible to modify a already deployed file after deployment? I'm looking for workaround here. Example: I read a value in my existing config file then I increment this value by one or simply replace this value with another?
EDIT 2
I'm now able to add the config file to the WebApi.zip package on root and/or in bin folder. I followed the comment of Shayki Abramczyk bu using the xml transform of deploy. Still not working. And the errors messages are so poor. Seriously Microsoft? Is your transformation system even working? I see question similar to mine everywhere.
And now I get
The file is correct, transform works fine from Visual Studio Publish tool. I really think the xml transform tool from Microsoft in Azure is just not working.
EDIT 3
Is it possible to issues from my transformmations come from NLog because of the name and then special rule I apply on it?
Related
I am looking for a hopefully ready, out of the box solution for my problem here. Here is outline:
I would like to have a file named local.config that contains certain information about my local environment.
That file will be ignored and will never make its way to the build server (ignored from gitHub).
Whenever I build locally, transformation happen.
Whenever I build on the server, whatever information found in main app.config is used.
Both SlowCheeta and Configuration Transform should work for your needs.
Here is what I ended up doing and there is probably better ways to do what I was after but unfortunately (and the fault is on me for not formulating the question correctly).
Modify the cproj file with the following:
<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll" />
Place your config files and transforms into your project accordingly. Every time you build, the configuration is transformed just fine.
I did not like that fact I had to have an extra base.config file but apparently, transforming from source directly to the target makes the msbuild rather upset.
I would like to create a Build Definition inside TFS 2012 Express which will simply copy all files within my project source tree to another folder on my drive. Just to underline - I do not want the build output to go to another directory - I want the source files themselves to. The reason for this is I have IIS pointed at a specific folder, and I want the build to copy the latest asp and aspx files to the IIS hosted folder.
I am not sure of the intricacies of doing this, I did find : http://toadcode.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/copy-multiple-files-via-tfs-build.html articles like this but I simply need a more direct list of what I need to do from somebody who understands this area.
Basically - when the build is queued, all I want is to copy my project source files to another directory :). I think this can be done by editing some Build.xml file...but when making a build definition I dont seem to be given the freedom to do what I would like to!
I think what I am looking for to alter my DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml file to alter the build process which will let me run this / or a batch file after the build process completes?
My TFS build process edit screen looks like this:
Using this post as a guide on how to start editing TFS Build Templates (or the Wrox TFS 2012 book), you need to make the following changes:
Locate the Copy to Drop Folder Activity:
Drag in a "CopyDirectory" activity under the "Drop Files to Drop Location" (from the Toolbox under Team Foundation Build Activities):
Goto the Properties Window for the new Activity and set Source and Destination as follows:
Destination: Path.Combine(BuildDetail.DropLocation, "MyOutputFolder")
Source: Path.Combine(SourcesDirectory, "MyFileFolder")
You may need to repeat this if you don't have all your files in one folder.
I actually put something together for TFS2010 and 2013 (not 2012, unfortunately) a few weeks ago that does exactly that. Basically, anything in the workspace you define for your build just gets shoved over to the drop location.
Here's a link to the blog post where you can download them:
http://www.incyclesoftware.com/2014/06/deploying-uncompiled-resources-release-management/
For the record, I strongly recommend against using a build process template to deploy software. Don't try to overextend the build... its job is taking stuff from source control and compiling/packaging it for deployment. Use a real release management solution to actually handle deploying software.
Add a bat file to your source folder. within the batch file add an xcopy %1*.* TargetLocation.
Add an invoke process activity to your workflow, somewhere near the end. call the bat file and pass it the SourcesDirectory.
Our code uses different settings for development and production environments so we were looking at using VS2010's web.config transform capabilities. After hours of trial and error, nothing has worked. We found a Web.config transformation tester and found that what we had been trying was supposed to work (according to this tool.)
We tried testing the transformations using Build, not Publish. Does it only run on Publish or could something else be wrong?
Yes, it only runs on Publish. To test, publish to a local dir. You'll want to publish your application with the correct target environment set.
You can also integrates web config transformations with MS Build.
It seems you don't have to be in Publish mode to generate a transformed Web.config file. There's just a bit more work involved.
Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt and navigate to your working project directory that contains your .csproj file. Enter the following command:
MSBuild project.csproj /t:TransformWebConfig /p:Configuration=Debug
The example above would run the Debug transformation during the build of project.csproj. This will output a Web.config file into the obj\Debug\TransformWebConfig\transformed\ directory, where Debug is whatever Configuration you set in the command above.
Copy this file to replace your root Web.config file, and you're done. You could write a batch script to run both of those items automatically, but for larger projects with many configurations it could become unwieldy.
You might be able to add those command line arguments to the build process inside of Visual Studio, but I'm not sure how - as far as I know for this method to work you would have to build from the command line instead of inside Visual Studio. You can still use Clean inside of Visual Studio to clean out the obj folder but it will only clean the solution configuration mode selected in the IDE. Clean will not revert your edited web.config file, so you may want to back it up before proceeding if you need to.
(Command line arguments found from this MSDN article.)
You don't need run Publish/Build Package in order to test Web.config transformation. There is a cool trick to quickly know the transformation result here. Scroll down until you see a comment about creating TransformConfig project. It works like a charm, note that you can safely ignore 7th step (frankly I don't know how to do that step properly but fortunately we don't need it :)).
I would like to harvest a folder with a lot of files by using heat.exe. But instead of harvesting all files, I would like to exclude specific file extensions like "*.txt" or something like that.
How can I do this?
I think the only option for now is to harvest the entire folder and apply a transform to the resulting .wxs file (see -t:<xsl> switch) to exclude what is not required (txt files in your case). However, I didn't try the 3.5 version of heat (judging based on the 3.0), but I don't think there are changes in this area.
I'm not a huge proponent of this pattern. How do you ensure change control when using a non-deterministic process? How do you know a file that appeared in a directory really should ship in a product and how do you know a file that vanished from the directory shouldn't break a build? How do you know you are breaking the component rules and creating servicability issues?
I used to do dynamic file linking in the 1990's because it was "easy" but I can remember it biting me many times and I haven't done it ever since.
I know Bob Arnson used to agree with this view point:
http://www.mail-archive.com/wix-users#lists.sourceforge.net/msg03420.html
But now in WiX 3.5 I'm starting to see capabilities that support dynamic linking and I just don't understand why they would go that way. I'd much rather update a WXS file and check it back into source control then risk putting my deployment process on autopilot.
Instead of trying to figure out how to harvest selected files from of a folder, I use a before build action to populate a folder with just the files that I want harvested. The following workflow has been working for me:
Delete a "files" if it exists
Create a "files" folder
Copy the files to the "files" folder. I use the robocopy build action, that gives me enough control to specify which files to include or exclude.
Harvest the entire folder.
I have it set to run the harvest action conditionally, just for debug builds. Release builds are generated from our TFS server and use the generated .wxs from source control. It should be OK to run harvest on the build server, but it's an extra step and not having it run eliminates the "non-deterministic process" problem described by Christopher Painter. Other than that one step, the same steps execute on the build server as they do on my dev machine.
I have some failing builds and the build data is missing from the emails sent from CCNET?
It contains tests run and modifications but no build or error data?
I don't think I have messed up the xsl's.. any thoughts?
UPDATE :
Yes i've looked at
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Email+Publisher
and Yes in the publishers section i've called xmllogger before email
UPDATE :
I'm not sure if this means anything but.. in the compile.xsl it looks for
/cruisecontrol//buildresults//message
but there is no 'buildresults' node??
It just goes..
cruisecontrol --> build --> msbuild (then warnings, project, messages etc etc)
UPDATE :
Have the following in ccservice.exe.config. No mention of msbuild??
xsl\header.xsl
xsl\compile.xsl
xsl\unittests.xsl
xsl\fit.xsl
xsl\modifications.xsl
xsl\fxcop-summary.xsl
-- Lee
I had a similar problem yesterday with a new install of cruisecontrol as a service.
Make sure you have specified the correct xsl files in the ccnetservice.exe.config (if you are running the service) and ccnet.exe.config if you running the console version.
you need to restart the service/console app once these are updated.
HTH
Edit:
Are you using the standard msbuild logger, or Rodemeyer's one? If you are using Rodemeyer's, you need to use diffrent XSL transforms (msbuild2ccnet.xsl) to normal (compile.xsl, msbuild.xsl). There is a guide for that here
Check that your output is making it to the build log, located in server\<projectName>\artifacts.
If you have modified the xsl, make sure its in the correct folder (webdashboard\xsl and server\xsl). You can test the xsl works fine by copying the build log file (see server\<projectName>\artifacts directory). to a file, and adding the relevant XSL includes to the header then opening the XML file in a web browser)
EDIT:
in the <xslFiles> section of ccservice.exe.config, add another line like this:
<file name="xsl\compile-msbuild.xsl" />
or
<file name="xsl\msbuild.xsl" />
as i am not using the standard logger (you are though), i am uncertain as to which of those is needed. try one, then if that doesnt work, try the other!