I am using the new VSTS release management to deploy my website to Azure web app. All I want is to transform one connection string for QA environment. I am finding it hard to get answer for that. Any help is much appreciated.
I don't want to create tokens in my web config file because I want to use the config file as such in my local environment.
You can also use the VSTS variable which contains the connectionstring to deploy as a connectionstring to an Azure WebApp.
This looks like a shameless plug for my open source VSTS task. But it is a clean and easy solution for your problem. My task can be used to deploy appsettings and connectionstrings configured as variables in VSTS to deploy to an Azure webapp. Without changing the web.config.
Take a look in the marketplace to install it in VSTS and for the documentation: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=pascalnaber.PascalNaber-Xpirit-WebAppConfiguration
Storing connection strings (other than the local dev ones) on a source control is far from being a best practice from a security perspective.
The build/release management system allows you to have secret variables and/or services endpoints you can reuse in your flow.
However you should look into the publish commutator in the build step (MSBuild arguments), that will ask to visual studio to do the publish and apply transformations from the config transform files and publishing profile.
/p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:PackageLocation="$(build.stagingDirectory)"
This is what I put in my MSBuild Arguments on a Visual Studio Build task on my build definition and it works like a champ:
/p:DeployOnBuild=True;PublishProfile="$(BuildConfiguration)" /p:publishUrl="$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)" /p:DeleteExistingFiles=True /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish
Note that I have BuildConfiguration as a variable which corresponds to UAT or Release or Dev for example. The PublishProfile corresponds to a Publish Profile you've set up in your project/solution. (So, if you name your Publish Profile "Hey-Go-To-Dev" then you'd put "Hey-Go-To-Dev" in the BuildConfiguration (or a new variable you can set up).
Anyway: This will execute your publish profile and do any related transforms in your web.config file(s).
Godspeed.
Related
I'm trying to setup CI via TFS 2015, I've got a solution that has got 2 main Web application that currently we deploy manually editing the config files and so on (which sometimes leads to errors)
I've read about build/release process and in the past I've used Jenkins as build server. But till today I've got a question and that's related to when apply the transformation of XML config files.
In my current VTFS2015 setup I've created a build process and I build the project with the following line
msbuild /p:Configuration=Test /p:PublishProfile=Test /p:DeployOnBuild=true xxx\xxx.csproj
This creates me in the folder obj\Test\Package\PackageTmp the package
Is this ok? or should this be done in the release management tab? Consider in my farm I've
Test (from DEV trunk)
Staging (from Dev trunk as well)
Production (from production trunk on 3 machines)
My goal is to have them automatically delivered on the machines, but I don't know the right moment to apply the transformation (during the build I can use the publish feature, during the RM I can use a ps1 script)
Thanks in advance
Well, I think this thread will helps: What TFS 2017 build task applies web.config transforms during TFS builds?
To apply the transformations you can use the extension: Apply transformations in vNext build process.
Usually it should be a package and be used in a deploy task such as
Deploy: WinRM - IIS Web App Deployment or Azure App Service
Deployment to achieved the deployment.
1) Can transforms be engaged in both Builds and Releases?
Yes, you could also do this in a build pipeline with the useage of build deploy task. You need to add the task after the publish build
artifacts task.
2) Does TFS 2017 require a lot of special handling to engage a
transform file?
update
The BuildConfiguration variable is different in TFS 2017, it's inside
the MSBuild task! Transforms are now applied according
to the MSBuild task Configuration setting.
Edit the .proj file is a method to do the transform. If you don't need to change the transform, it will auto do it during the build.You
could also use some 3-rd party task/extension for extra transform such
as: XDT Transform
Usually we separate the build and release for the deployment, cause
it's easy to configure multiple environments and easy to debug issue.
You definitely could do this only in build but with a bloated process.
You could refer this tutorial: Build and Deploy Azure Web Apps using
Team Foundation Server/Services vNext Builds.
For a separate build and release solution, you could take a look at
this blog: Using web.config transforms and Release Manager – TFS
2017/Team Services edition
I'm trying to create web deploy packages through visual studio team services.
Currently, I have created a web deploy publish profile in Visual Studio. I use MSBuild in Visual Studio Team Services to build the solution and create a web deploy package. I then zip the package and save it to a shared location. However, the issue with this approach is that it does not provide me a way have a same build for different environments. Let us say, I created a web deploy package for DEV environment. Then when I have to deploy the build to SIT environment, I would need to build the solution again and create a package. This way I would have different builds for different environments. I would like to have the same build get promoted to different environment for better traceability and maintenance.
One way I feel I can achieve this is to have a separate build definition for just building the application and save the DLLs to a shared location. I can then have a separate build definition which takes the build from shared location and create a web deploy package from the build. How can I achieve that on VSTS?
Other way possible is creating a label when any deployment happens one environment, say Dev environment. To do the deployment in SIT I can use the source code with same label and then use MSBuild to create a web deployment package. Is there any way to achieve this through VSTS with/ without creating a separate build definition of each environment?
Any other suggestions than above?
You can use VSTS Release Management to deploy your deployment package to different environment and use "Tokenizer" task in Release Management Utility tasks to update the config file in the package base on the variable for different environment configurations.
And you can also try with Web Deploy Parameterization.
We use Hedgehog Team Development for Sitecore to manage content items and also want to use it for content deployment.
I am trying to create a TDS build configuration that should deploy TDS items to a remote dev server. Dev server isn’t on my local so I don’t know what I should mention in “Sitecore Deploy Folder” field.
What I am trying to achieve is when any developer / TeamCity builds the TDS project in dev configuration the TDS items should be deployed to the dev site. I can’t create this configuration from the dev server as we don’t have visual studio on the dev server.
I even tried putting the path from the server (this path doesn’t exist on my local from where I am try to set the configuration) but that doesn’t work.
Any directions on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
On the Build tab of your TDS project, there are two fields.
Sitecore Web Url This is what TDS will use to connect to the server component to deploy your items.
Sitecore Deploy Folder This is used for two purposes, one to install the aforementioned server component ("connector") and to deploy the output of your web project.
For deployment to a remote server, the Sitecore Deploy Folder needs to be a UNC path to the web root on the server (e.g. \\devserver\share\path-to-webroot), and whatever identity is running the deploy needs write permissions on that share.
I believe TDS only uses this path for deploying the "connector", which consists of the _DEV folder with the web service endpoint and some libraries that are placed into Website\bin.
If you are choosing to use the Deploy feature of TDS for CI, ideally you would deploy the "connector" manually the first time and although there is no use in setting the Sitecore Deployment Folder anymore TDS would not deploy with it blank. Your best bet is to setup a share on a server and use the share path for that setting (i.e. \myserver\share).
As a side note, check out the TDS package installer that comes with the app under C:\Program Files (x86)\Hedgehog Development\Team Development for Sitecore (VS2013). It is possible to set the TDS projects to generate *.update packages for code and content and automate their deployment or deploy them manually - just another way of implementing the CI.
I am using TeamCity as build for Sitecore and TDS deployments. Have a few different configurations depending on packaging needs. (update packages vs. webdeploy, etc).
Our typical approach to this is to create the MSBuild XML file for the configuration directly, which allows me to control the CI builds and deployment distinct from local developer builds.
In this case, the active configuration during build is set to DEV-CM, or TEST-CM, depending on the environment, and I pass in MSBuild parameters for:
IsDesktopBuild=false
GeneratePackages=true (TDS project properties are set to generate separate code/file packages)
SitecoreWebUrl=ht tp://[host]
SitecoreDeployFolder=\[server][share]\website
In visual studio, the DEV-CM and TEST-CM configuration targets are created and configured for the TDS projects to enforce Deployment settings, multi-project packaging dependencies, etc.
This sends the configuration to TDS's portion of the build, generates the packages (which I have published out as TeamCity artifacts) and performs the TDS deploy to the target URL and target UNC.
I would encourage the route of separate build XML files and specifying that XML file as the target script in the TeamCity build step.
I am currently integrating in web deploy package publish via visual studio and tfs bulid 2010 and have some questions:
For different environments, is a Publish profile needed for each?
As part of the publish is it possible to execute a generated database against a database?
Within the publish profile is it possible to create an application pool, web site, configure it etc if it doesn't previously exist?
Re tfs build - is it possible to click a button to deploy a successful build based on a selected publish profile?
Thanks for any feedback!
I know you're trying to use webdeploy, although most enterprise architecture will use other tooling. I suggest using powershell remoting tools. This gives you the full power of the .NET framework to do database deployments using whatever tools you want.
I usually create different transforms to transform the configuration files. Depending on what environment you deploy to you can use the appropriate transform that matches your environment or manipulate the transform as desired.
I've just been upgrading an Azure project to Visual Studio 2010 and have been taking advantage of the new XML configuration transformation feature that is built into VS2010 web projects. It seems to work great with Azure web roles. I even managed to get the Azure project service configuration file to do a similar thing by following the instructions here.
However, I can't seem to get configuration transformation working for the lone worker role in my Azure project. I know that VS2010 only has built-in support for config transformation with web roles, but I found a good article describing how to get config transformations working with non-web projects. I've followed the instructions and it works - but only to a point. It successfully spits out the correct .config file (with appropriate transformations) into the worker role project's own bin directory, but it doesn't pick this new .config file up when it's put into the cloud package.
I suspect there's some MSBuild trickery needed to get this to work, but I don't know MSBuild very well, so am appealing to any gurus out there for help and/or samples :)
I have found the best way to do this is to use msbuild. I usually do this with a separate msbuild file outside my solution so I keep the local dev settings separate from the production settings. You can find out more here. I then can run the build to change the settings and upload the project to Azure. I can also run this to change the settings and then run deploy through VS if I need to debug the problem. I also have a target in the msbuild file that then can revert everything back to local. It would be nice to have these things in VS (which I have asked for from the product team). The sample project is on github.
This is also explained in the book we wrote in the Life Cycle chapter.