We have a Mainline build versioned "x.0.0.r" where we publish a web service using octopus. Our branches are versioned "x.y.z.r" for specific releases. We DO NOT want to publish this web service when building from a branch.
We are using TFS: 2013 xaml build def; msbuild args: "... /p:RunOctoPack=true ..."
Short of setting /p:RunOctoPack=false or removing the OctoPack arguments from the branch build definition, is there any other way to NOT run Octopus? Perhaps in the packages.config file, to say if the version is NOT ".0.0." set "\p:RunOctoPack=false"?
We have missed removing this parameter when branching and cloning the build def and have mistakenly published the web service from the branch a few times. Would like to avoid this going forward.
Thanks,
tom
The deployments you describe are a bit confusing. I think you are wanting to deploy all versions tagged with version 18.x.y.z and not deploy any other version numbers.
Using Channels in Octopus would allow you to achieve this, without adding logic into your build process.
In your deployment process in Octopus, you would have a step that is deployment of your application. This is the one that you only want run when you are deploying version 18.x.
In the Channels section, add a channel and create a version rule for the channel. The package step will be the deployment step created earlier, and the version range will be something like [18.0.0,18.999.999.999)
The Version Rule Design screen gives you the ability to add sample version numbers to test your version expression.
This means that all deployments of version 18 will run the package step, and all others will skip it.
You can also get additional help via the Support channels
Related
I would like to integrate an automated versioning system in my ASP.NET project. For each release, it should have a version number based on the previous release. I am planning to integrate Gitversion https://gitversion.net/. Does anyone use it in your projects? For the CI/CD pipeline we have teamcity and octopus deploy.
What is the best practice for automated software release versions?
Thanks in advance
As one of the maintainers of GitVersion, I'm obviously biased, but since you're asking how to use GitVersion to implement a "best practice for automated software release", I'm going to unashamedly give you a textual description of a talk I've done on how I prefer to version and release software with GitVersion, TeamCity and Octopus Deploy.
Developer Workflow
The first thing you should figure out is what kind of developer workflow you want for your software. GitVersion supports Git Flow and many simplified variants of it, and GitHub Flow (as well as many other trunk based development flows). Which workflow you should choose depends on what type of software you are developing, your team and most importantly; your personal preference.
Once you have chosen your workflow, you can configure which mode GitVersion should operate under.
Version Source
GitVersion works by calculating a version number from your Git repository. This means that you should not commit a version number to Git in any shape or form. Not within a package.json, pom.xml, .csproj, or any other build- or project-related file that often mandates the existence of a version number.
Versioning
Instead, you should allow GitVersion to produce a version number based on the Git history, using the currently checked out commit as its starting point, and searching through the parents and their tags to calculate an appropriate version number for the current commit. This version number can then be used in any way you want in your build pipeline. You can, for instance, write GitVersion's FullSemVer variable to package.json by executing the following command:
npm version $GitVersion_FullSemVer
If you are developing on the .NET platform, it's also possible to use GitVersion to patch your AssemblyInfo.cs files so the calculated version number is compiled into your assemblies. With InformationalVersion containing the SHA of the Git commit being built and versioned, you'll be able to identify the exact origin of a compiled assembly.
Build
Once you have your workflow in order and GitVersion has a good source of information to use for its versioning, you can go ahead and create a build pipeline for your software. A typical build pipeline will look something like this:
git clone. (Ensure that the clone is complete and not shallow or a detached HEAD. See requirements for more information.)
GitVersion. Execute GitVersion by whichever means make most sense to your environment.
Patch. Patch the version number created by GitVersion in step 2 into every file in your repository that makes sense, such as AssemblyInfo.cs, package.json, etc.
Build. Perform the build of your software.
Test. Run tests that ensure the quality of the software.
Package. Create a package of your software, using the version number created by GitVersion in step 2.
Release. Release the package using the package management software of your choice, such as Octopus Deploy, npm, nuget, composer, or similar.
Test. Perform automatic tests of the released software, if possible. If successful, it's possible to automatically promote the released software to other environments, if applicable.
Through GitVersion's built-in support for build servers, the calculated version number will also be promoted to the build server to version the build itself. This will be done automatically on TeamCity, for instance. In TeamCity, I recommend that you run GitVersion as its own build configuration exposing the required variables which can then be used in dependent build configurations later on.
Release
Once you have a built artifact containing the version number generated by GitVersion, you can use the same version number to create a package, create a release and deploy the release in Octopus Deploy.
You told you want to integrate an automated versioning system? I would like to throw my hat in the ring.
I am author of Vernuntii, a simple semantic versioning library with git integration.
The answer of #Asbjørn told you already about the best practices for example choosing a workflow that is suited for your project.
The main part a versioning tool like GitVesion or Vernuntii is to generate a suitable NEXT VERSION based on (non-)existing git tags.
So at the end of the day it is a matter of taste what kind of complexity you want HOW the NEXT VERSION is calculated.
So when you want cross-branch versioning, then you are good to go with GitVersion, but if you don't need that kind of complexity then you can try a single-branch versioning like it is implemented in Vernuntii.
For more informations take a look at the README.md of Vernuntii.
Here, for giving you my impression of versioning tools and their complexity, let me give you a list (sorted from least complex to most complex):
MinVer
Verlite
Vernuntii
Nerdbank.GitVersioning
GitVersion
A fun fact beside: all libraries from top to Vernuntii also allows to calculate the next version from detached HEAD.
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)
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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 understand that there is currently a feature request for something like this, but I'm hoping that there is some sort of workaround using the current version (1.6)
We build for our dev and test environments from a dev branch in TFS, and build for our QA and Production environments from a release branch in TFS. Since these produce distinct nuget packages, I can't use the same package feed. The deploy package step doesn't seem to have a environment scope option. Is there some other way to say "Deploy package X version Y for Dev/Test, and package A version B for QA/Production?"
You can use the same feed, with the following caveats:
The nugets built from the two branches obviously have to have different (non-colliding) versions. I add the 'dev' suffix to the package built from the 'dev' branch (eg 1.2.3.4-dev), and leave my 'stable' branch bare.
You have to be explicit when you 'create release', because by default Octopus will pick up the highest version nuget available, and that might not be the release you want (stable presumably lags dev). Pick the version of the package you want (and set the deployment version appropriately). If you are creating your release via TeamCity, ensure you use the --packageVersion argument as well as set the release number.
Since the above only works if there's only one package in the release, your deployment process does (unfortunately) have to produce one monolithic nuget, or you will get version-mismatches.
The advantage of this kind of arrangement, of course, is that at a pinch you could push your dev build to QA (or Prod) if the need ever arose.
All this assumes both branches build as the same package of course. You could build different packages between the dev and stable branches (but I don't think I'd recommend this because of duplicating all the Octopus config).
Update: apparently you can use Octo.exe to specify different version numbers across different packages - see https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/Octopus-Tools.
I have set up a build step on TeamCity,as described here, to do automatic release deployments to our test server. But it is not using the latest nuget packages that was build in TeamCity.
Use Case :
Teamcity will create nuget package with version 1.0.0.9, all the dlls that is in the package is the correct version, and the Release in Octopus, that was deployed has got the same version number , but the packages that octopus uses is of an earlier package eg 1.0.0.5.
I have specified the --force parameter on the build step so it should use the latest packages but it is not.
If I manually create a release in Octopus, and select the latest packages it is working 100%
Please can someone tell me if I am missing something.
thanks in advance
I think what you need to do is create two build configurations in TeamCity, one to build and one to deploy with Octopus. Refer to this link that has a small blurb toward the end:
Note that NuGet packages created from your build won't appear in TeamCity until after the build completes. This means you'll usually need to configure a secondary build configuration, and use a snapshot dependency and build trigger in TeamCity to run the deployment build configuration after the first build configuration completes.
So in my case I created 2 build configurations, then setup a snapshot dependency from the build to the deploy config and also a trigger to kick off the deploy after a successful build.
It looks like --force is just to force packages to the be re-installed if they have already been installed. Are you using the --packageversion parameter?
My organization uses Jenkins CI. We use the unique build number as our package version and then deploy that specific package version using the --packageversion paramater.
In the case where we have multiple services that need to be deployed. We have an upstream job / main job that provides the unique build number.
I'd imagine you can do the same thing with TeamCity
Master Job (unique build number) calls jobs A and jobs B with parameter (unique build). Jobs A and B build version (from Master Job). Jobs A and B complete then publish their respective versions.
It could be a few things.
Check out.
http://octopusdeploy.com/documentation/integration/teamcity
You haven't mentioned how your consuming the feeds from Octopus in Teamcity. I would start there.
Next I would use the teamcity action to do your deploy. You asked "Where should the --waitfordeployment flag be added" there is a check box to make sure the deploy has worked before the action can continue.
In TeamCity I use a Octo Push Packages step and in the Additional Parameters field I specify the --defaultpackgeversion {VERSION} parameter.
This will force Octo to use a specific version of packages instead of just choosing the 'Latest Version'.
There are more possible reasons for the problem.
To see the problems with Octopus go to Configuration -> Diagnostics
Another common problem is to use a Package Name #{variable} in a deploy step
Currently it is not possible and Package Name should be set manually, for example MyWebSite or MyWindowsService. See UserVoice for this feature.
We're currently using CruiseControl.NET as a continuous integration server for a number of ASP.NET web projects, but we're also evaluating TeamCity.
This is working great for our build server.
What we'd like to setup is a customer facing test server. I'm thinking that when we are happy for our latest development version to be released to the client for test, we could label it in SVN.
I'd then like a second build server to build this version ready for the client to see.
The question is this - is there any way to get either CruiseControl.NET or TeamCity to build only the latest labelled version of the code in a repository?
If anyone has any alternative suggestions, that'd also be greatly appreciated!
You could have a designated location or branch in your subversion repository e.g. \release then point the second TeamCity build server at that.
When your are happy with trunk then overwrite the existing location. The second build server will pick this up, build it, and even deploy it to a test server.
I don't think there's a way to do this directly in TeamCity. You can however configure your build trigger to filter on files and/or users. So, if you touch a given file to indicate release status in addition to or rather than labelling, you can use that.
The trigger filter could be, for example (untested):
+:/ReleaseVersion.cs