Plugin subdirectory in Azure deployment - visual-studio-2010

Question

I use MEF to extend my web application and I use the following folder structure
> bin
> extensions
> Plugin1
> Plugin2
> Plugin3
To achive this automatically, the plugin projects output paths are set to these directories. My application is working with and without azure. My problem is now, that it seems to be inpossible to include the extensions subdirectory automatically to the azure deployment package.
I've tried to set the build dependencies too, without success.
Is there another way?

Answer 1

Well,
I've struggled with the bin folder. The issue (if we may say "issue") is that the packaging process, just packs what is "copy to out directory" set to "copy if newer/aways" only for the Web application (Web Role) project. Having another assemblies in the BIN which are not explicitly referenced by the Web Application will not get deployed.
For my case, where I have pretty "static" references I just pack them in a ZIP, put them in a BLOB container and then use the Azure Bootstrapper to download, extract and put in the BIN folder these references. However, because I don't know the actual location of the BIN folder in a startup task, I use helper wrappers for the bootstrapper to make the trick.
You will need to get the list of local sites, which can be accomplished by something similar to:
public IEnumerable<string> WebSiteDirectories
{
get
{
string roleRootDir = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RdRoleRoot");
string appRootDir = (RoleEnvironment.IsEmulated) ? Path.GetDirectoryName(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory) : roleRootDir;
XDocument roleModelDoc = XDocument.Load(Path.Combine(roleRootDir, "RoleModel.xml"));
var siteElements = roleModelDoc.Root.Element(_roleModelNs + "Sites").Elements(_roleModelNs + "Site");
return
from siteElement in siteElements
where siteElement.Attribute("name") != null
&& siteElement.Attribute("name").Value == "Web"
&& siteElement.Attribute("physicalDirectory") != null
select Path.Combine(appRootDir, siteElement.Attribute("physicalDirectory").Value);
}
}
Where the _roleModelNs variable is defined as follows:
private readonly XNamespace _roleModelNs = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition";
Next you will need something similar to that method:
public void GetRequiredAssemblies(string pathToWebBinfolder)
{
string args = string.Join("",
#"-get https://your_account.blob.core.windows.net/path/to/plugin.zip -lr $lr(temp) -unzip """,
pathToWebBinfolder,
#""" -block");
this._bRunner.RunBootstrapper(args);
}
And the RunBootstrapper has following signature:
public bool RunBootstrapper (string args)
{
bool result = false;
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo();
psi.FileName = this._bootstrapperPath;
psi.Arguments = args;
Trace.WriteLine("AS: Calling " + psi.FileName + " " + psi.Arguments + " ...");
psi.CreateNoWindow = true;
psi.ErrorDialog = false;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
psi.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
psi.RedirectStandardInput = false;
psi.RedirectStandardError = true;
// run elevated
// psi.Verb = "runas";
try
{
// Start the process with the info we specified.
// Call WaitForExit and then the using statement will close.
using (Process exeProcess = Process.Start(psi))
{
exeProcess.PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.High;
string outString = string.Empty;
// use ansynchronous reading for at least one of the streams
// to avoid deadlock
exeProcess.OutputDataReceived += (s, e) =>
{
outString += e.Data;
};
exeProcess.BeginOutputReadLine();
// now read the StandardError stream to the end
// this will cause our main thread to wait for the
// stream to close
string errString = exeProcess.StandardError.ReadToEnd();
Trace.WriteLine("Process out string: " + outString);
Trace.TraceError("Process error string: " + errString);
result = true;
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Trace.TraceError("AS: " + e.Message + e.StackTrace);
result = false;
}
return result;
}
Of course, in your case you might want something a bit more complex, where you'll first try to fetch all plugins (if each plugin is in its own ZIP) via code, and then execute the GetRequiredAssemblies multiple times for each plugin. And this code might be executing in the RoleEntryPoint's OnStart method.
And also, if you plan to be more dynamic, you can also override the Run() method of your RoleEntryPoint subclass, and check for new plugins every minute for example.
Hope this helps!
EDIT
And how can you get the plugins deployed. Well, you can either manually upload your plugins, or you can develop a small custom BuildTask to automatically upload your plugin upon build.