TFS Team Build with VSO - Git Commit/Push files that have been altered by the build process - visual-studio-2013

I have created a build definition that uses the Default Template(GitTemplate.12.xaml). I have a Pre-Build Script that updates the version numbers for all of the assemblies in the build.
I would like to be able to commit and push the files that have been altered by the build definition to the git repository.
I have tried doing this using a PowerShell script but was not able to do this because Git with VSO requires that you pass in user credentials.
I have downloaded the template to see if I can customise it to complete this task but can see no obvious way of solving my problem.
My next step will be to investigate writing a custom piece of code that can be called by the template.Just wanted to find out before I delve into this any deeper if I am wasting my time.
I am using VSO and VS2013.
Does anybody have a solution to my problem?

You should not commit those changes as it allows a developer to build an identical version numbered assembly locally.It is not a good practice to push the results back into Source Control.
You should set all of your assemblyinfo.* files to 0.0.0.0 and push. Then the only way for your assemblies to get a "good" version number is through the build process.
If you do want to go ahead you will need to authenticate using the "alternative" credentials that you can get from your profile page.

Related

Is it possible to run a TeamCity build with a VCS Root that is unavailable?

My team has using TeamCity to automate some tiresome maintenance tasks, and over time, we've found we want to re-use common pieces, so we've got some common functions in a repository on Bitbucket.
For better or for worse, our Bitbucket has a daily backup/maintenance period that, when active, blocks all of our builds from running with the following error:
Failed to collect changes ... Bitbucket is currently unavailable
I've looked at the various checkout modes, though we're generally limited to checking out files on the server (Rather than agent). I had figured that if the files are checked out to the server, then if Bitbucket were unavailable, there would be some way to fall back on "Whatever is already there". Especially as we don't have Clean build checked.
Is there some way that we can fall back on whatever is already checked out on the TeamCity server? Or do we need to set up some kind of redundancy?
Yes you can.
you need to simply build a project in a directory location of a teamcity machine and then call the run from that location instead.
You can have a build with No VCS at all. This build run will utilize the folder you mentioned instead of cloning a VCS.

Share Git repository directory across multiple build definitions

When a private agent build starts in VSTS, it gets assigned a directory, e.g. C:\vstsagent_work\1\s
Is there a way to set this to a different path? On other CI servers, like Jenkins, I can define a custom workspace for a job. I'm dealing with a huge monorepo and have dozens of build definitions around the same repository. It makes sense (to me anyway) to share a single directory on the build agent computer.
The benefit to me is that my builds can use pre-built components from upstream repositories, if they have already been built.
Thanks for any help
VSTS build always creates a working directory per build definition. This leaves you two options:
Create a single build definition and use conditionals on steps to skip certain steps in order to only run what is needed. This allows you to use the standard steps and may require a powershell script to figure out which steps to run and which ones to skip. Set variables from powershell using the special logging commands.
Disable the get sources step and add a step that manually fetches sources. You'll need to clean the working directory, checkout the right commit, basically replicating the actions in the get sources step manually. It may require some fidgeting to get all the behavior correctly for normal build, pull request builds etc. That way you can take full control over the location where sources are checked out.
I'd also recommend you investigate the 2017 project formats that use the new <packageReference> in the project files to fetch packages. The new system supports configuring a version range which can always fetch the latest available version of packages. It's a better long-term solution.
No, it isn’t available in VSTS build system.
You can change working directory of agent (C:\vstsagent_work) (Re-configure it and specify another working folder), but it won’t uses the same source folder for different build definitions, the folder would be 1, 2, 3 ….

Publish a specific revision using CruiseControl.Net

I am setting up a CruiseControl.Net server. So far, it only builds a project (.Net website), and I kind-of know how to set up unit testing, code coverage, etc in the future.
What I will need to have soon is this:
The developers commit changes to SVN continually, thus CCNet builds often.
CCNet will publish the latest version to the development server, as soon as a commit is validated (with unit tests etc).
The project manager validates a specific version, in order to publish it to the pre-production server, and create a SVN tag from this revision.
The last point is where my problem lies: how exactly can I set up things so the project manager can, for instance, browse to the CCNet web dashboard, select a previous specific build, and says "this is the build I want to publish" ?
I believe that my thinking is flawed somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe CCNet is not the right place to do these manipulations ?
In my mind, I can create a SVN tag using CCNet, and mostly work from the trunk, but maybe I can't ? Maybe it's the other way around, and I should add a CCNet project every time a tag is created under SVN ?
The final goal is that I want to automate the publication process: zip creation (for archiving), web.config modification (using Nant for instance), and website publication (using FTP).
In all these steps, I want to limit the manual intervention to the maximum. If I can avoid to add a new project to CCNet every time a tag or branch is created in SVN, that would be awesome.
Thanks for your help, and sorry if it's not very easy to read, but it's not very clear in my head either...
Since you can create any task, you should be able to achieve the goal, though unfortunately not out-of-the-box.
Since you use SVN, it all depends actually on revision. I think I'd create a separate project for your third scenario and added a parameter where PM would provide revision number. Then based on that I'd tag sources etc. in my own task.
Regarding the other points, I think this is similar. Recently for web projects we started using MSDeploy, and in each stage build the MSDeploy package was created. Then there was a separate build called Deploy, that when forced allows us to select which package we want to deploy using MSDeploy.
Having several environments, however, started a little bit like overkill for managing with CCNet, and I'll be looking into kwakee at some time.

Using 2 SVN repositories for website - publishing question

I am a complete noob to this so if there is a completely obvious answer by all means make fun and point and laugh then give the answer.
We use Visual Studio 2010 to compile our published website. I have a repository that I use for my source code and one which I publish the compiled code to. I then check out the publish repository on the testing server and once it tests good I check out the repository on my main server. This is fine and all but I am using Tortoise SVN and automating the commit. Problem is, I really need to wipe the publish SVN repository, then copy the files, then commit. I just can't get that to happen and have it still recognize it as a SVN repository. Suggestions?
First of all, don't put compiled code into your source repository. It's bad form.
Look at Jenkins as a build server. Jenkins can use the msbuild.exe command to build .NET projects using the .sln file your project creates.
When you do a commit in Subversion, Jenkins will automatically fire off the build. If you have NUnit tests, Jenkins will run those and give you the results. You can have Jenkins store the compiled files for you in its archive. If someone wants to install a particular build, they can directly download it from Jenkins without having to do a checkout in Subversion first.
Jenkins offer all of these advantages:
It shows you all the changes in your repository and what changed in each commit.
It can run all sorts of tests automatically for you.
You can mark builds that are released using the "Simple Promotion" plugin.
You can tag builds in Subversion directly in Jenkins without needing a command line or working directory.
It can alert the developers if a build fails due to bad code, or if testing fails. These alerts can be done via Email, instant messaging, phone text messages, Twitter, and many other ways. All it takes is the right plugin which Jenkins makes easy to install.
Jenkins can act as a release repository which makes it easy to find the release, what's in the release and why.
Jenkins integrates with Bamboo, ViewVC, and Sventon. These are web-based repository browsers. This way Jenkins not only shows you the file changed, but what changed in the file.
Jenkins is easy to use and install. Download it and give it a try.
Unless you have a hard and fast requirement which forces you to use two separate repositories, i'd suggest taking a look at SVN tagging and branching functionality.
http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-branchtag.html
Having a repository for the published code really doesn't buy you anything. IMO, you would be better off with a bunch of zip files (one per release) with the date and SVN branch reflected in the name. DO have a changelog .txt file in the zip, and also check that into the repo.
Problem is, I really need to wipe the publish SVN repository, then copy the files, then commit.
You don't need wiping in repo. Just make commit to production repo with exported HEAD from dev-repo (post-commit hook for commit message)
And tags, yes, are more natural and bulletproof way.

Run command before pulling from SVN in TeamCity

I'm having an issue with TeamCity, which relates to the fact that it runs the source control step before it runs the build steps. My project is a windows service, so there are complications with this.
TeamCity often decides to delete the entire contents of the project directory, even though I have the clean build option unchecked. However, since this is a windows service this does not fly, as when trying to delete the dll's it errors out since they're in use:
Error while applying patch: Failed to delete: F:\PathToService\bin\Release\Library.dll
The most frustrating part is that the dll's aren't even under source control, TeamCity seems to have a mind of its own and decides to delete them anyway.
Is there a way to get around this, to be able to run a build step BEFORE doing the svn checkout so that I can stop the windows service first?
I would try to set up your CI environment so it uninstalls the windows service once you are done testing it. I am not aware of Teamcity pre-checkout hook.
The answer was to split up each service into a separate working directory. That prevents teamcity from deleting the dll's.

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