Include Search Paths in TeamCity build Configurations - continuous-integration

Normally when a Developer compiles a certain mixed C++/C# solution locally on their machine at our company, they employ the use of a .vssettings configuration file. One of the things included in this config file is reference to various directory paths for Lib and Include files.
However, our buildAgent machines (using TeamCity) are set up to be sterile, and have the bare minimum installed on them required to build any given solution/project. This means the above exampled mixed C++/C# project wont have access to the IDE's configuration where things like include search paths were set. TC accounts for this by allowing you to set all sorts of variables for any given buildConfiguration (or even by buildAgent)....
But how do I get an Include search path to WORK in TC? I'm copying down from Source Control (Perforce) a copy local of what I want Included (1), and then trying to define an Environment Variable (2) -- and yet TC fails the build (3).
I'm sure I have something configured wrong, but for the life of me cant figure out what!
Any help would be most appreciated,
blong
(1) VSC Client Mapping - Perforce
//depot/OpenSource/Boost-1.33.0/boost/... //team-city-agent/OpenSource/boost/...
(2) buildConfig Environment Variable definition
env.Include = %system.teamcity.build.checkoutDir%\OpenSource
(3) TC build log snippet
[16:57:39]: [Project "xxx.sln" (Build target(s)):] e:\buildagent\work\ef1853a454da9d94\xxx\rowsbase.cpp(5, 0): error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'boost/dynamic_bitset.hpp': No such file or directory

First, you should try to compile the solution yourself with msbuild or vcbuild on the command line, because TeamCity will do something similar. If necessary, add msbuild folder to the Path system variable. Then open the command line and type:
msbuild.exe YourSolution.sln
or
msbuild.exe YourSolution.sln /p:Configuration=Release
depending whether you want to do so in debug or release mode. This should give the same C1083 errors.
Here's the fix:
Add the path of the directories you need to add an environment variable (in fact, system variable) that I suggest you call INCLUDE.
Open the file VCProjectEngine.dll.config.xml in folder .../Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0/VC/vcpackages/.
Add the INCLUDE system variable to the include line. To me it came to replacing:
Include="$(VCInstallDir)include;$(VCInstallDir)atlmfc\include;$(WindowsSdkDir)\include;$(FrameworkSDKDir)include"
with:
Include="$(VCInstallDir)include;$(VCInstallDir)atlmfc\include;$(WindowsSdkDir)\include;$(FrameworkSDKDir)include;$(INCLUDE)"
Test it works: Open a new command line (need to after you change environment variables for them to be taken into account) and try to build your solution as shown above. This has worked for me to build C++ solutions with files that #include .
Now let's have it work in TeamCity too. You can run a TC build at this point to see whether it does, but it didn't for me. Go to the "Properties and environment variables" of your TC build configuration, and add an environment variable named INCLUDE with value the same path(s) as in the INCLUDE system variable above.
Now this should work. Hope it helps.

Setting the Build Agent Service to run as a non "local System" account fixed my problem.

I ran into a problem were my C++ projects would build in Visual Studio on the build agent, but they failed when built through TC. The build agent is running windows and agent is running as a service (TeamCity Build Agent Service). The problem was that the service was being run as "Local System" instead of the user that configured Visual Studio. I change service so it would log on as the "build" user and everything worked fine.

Related

Build Wix installer Project in Teamcity 9.1, but how to set the `WixToolPath` in build machine?

I'm using Win10 64bit OS, with Wix3.11RC Toolset installed. My VS2017 have created a Wix v3 installer Project. Our team is using TeamCity9.1 as the CI tool.
Now I want to make the Build Agent in TeamCity to support wixproj build without touch CI server settings(I don't have privilege ). I basically follow some tutorials to checked in all necessary Wix build files(the wix Bin folder, and the wix.targets ) which is put in a relative path to the source code, now I'm blocked with the path issue in editing .wixproj file, the official doc said:
http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/msbuild/daily_builds.html
<PropertyGroup>
<WixToolPath>$(SourceCodeControlRoot)\wix\[[Version]]\</WixToolPath>
<WixTargetsPath>$(WixToolPath)Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
<WixTasksPath>$(WixToolPath)wixtasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
</PropertyGroup>
And this is mine:
<PropertyGroup>
<WixToolPath>..\..\wix\3.11\</WixToolPath>
<WixTargetsPath>$(WixToolPath)targetsFile\v3.x\wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
<WixTasksPath>$(WixToolPath)wixtasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
</PropertyGroup>
The reason I'm using the relative path for WixToolPath is the $(SourceCodeControlRoot) was resolved as D:\ here, but actually the source code will be checked out by CI server and put under a random folder like D:\ABC\f14c7929aa63f1fc. By my configuration, the local build even can't go through, the build error indicates the WixTasksPath had been resolved to a non-existed path: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\WiX\v3.x\..\..\wix\3.11\wixtasks.dll
So how can I achieve? thanks!
One of the approaches you can try is to change the path in the file to the absolute path using TeamCity-provided references before invoking the tool. In TeamCity settings you can reference the checkout directory path as %system.teamcity.build.checkoutDir% or use ${teamcity.build.checkoutDir} within MSBuild step if run as MSBuild build step.
You can do the replacement in the first build step or just use TeamCity file content replacer to change the old value to new one.
just use
<WixTasksPath>wixtasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
this worked for me.

Visual Studio Custom Build Default Directory Incorrect

My Visual Studio 2013 Custom Build Tool step is failing because the directory in which the step is being executed is not the directory where the project file is (which was by default the case up until recently). I can patch it by adding a cd command to the start of the step to change to the project directory but I was wondering if anyone could tell me
how this directory path is set
how to change it.
The build always assumes the project directory as 'base' directory.
This gives msbuild a set location (Builds to bin\debug is a subfolder off 'Base', reference hint paths and a lot more besides).
I would just change the execute of your tool to be reference based (i.e ....\tool.exe or similar) or make use of the path environment variables ($(OutDir),$(TargetPath),$(ProjectPath),$(TargetDir) etc).
Another option that I make use of is to have a batch file called 'post.bat' that has the necessary steps to execute a custom tool. This is then placed in the project folder and added to the project as an artefact.
Without knowing exactly where your custom tool resides relative to the project (or solution) or what the 'working directory' requirements of the custom tool are I cannot suggest more.

Visual studio doesn't overwrite output libraries for different build configurations

I use CMake generated solution for Visual Studio 2010.
In my solution I have several lib projects and one exe project.
For Debug build configuration I use output names like lib1_d.lib, lib2_d.lib etc...
For Release build configuration I use lib1.lib, lib2.lib ...
thanks to CMake I have one extra build configuration I use - RelWithDebugInfo. I use same output names for this build configuration as for Release.
Now here is the problem:
Assuming everything is cleaned.
I hit F5 (run / start debugging) RelWithDebugInfo. All project are built (exe is depending on them) and project runs successfully.
I switch to Release and hit F5 again. All project are built and project runs successfully. (libraries in output directory are overwritten)
I switch back to RelWithDebugInfo and hit F5. VS quickly goes through and gives All outputs are up-to-date. ... Build succeeded. And DOES NOT overwrite lib files in output directory. So application crashes because it uses libraries for other build configuration.
This problem occurs for both ordering Release->RelWithDebugInfo and RelWithDebugInfo->Release
I haven't find a solution, how to add other prefix to RelWithDebugLibraries my SO question
Is there a way, to force Visual Studio 2010 to always overwrite outputs? Preferably by some flag which I can provide from CMake.
The VS build system solves this problem by using different build directories for different configurations. By default, 32-bit Debug output goes to the Debug directory, Release output goes to the Release directory, 64-bit Debug output goes to x64\Debug directory, etcetera. This way different configurations never step on each other's output files.
Looks to me like the mistake you made with your added RelwithDebugInfo configuration is that you didn't modify the output file names. So the build system sees an up-to-date output file from another configuration and doesn't think it necessary to rebuild them.
Coming up with variations of build output file names does get to be impractical once you go past two, do consider the VS-way to do this.

TFS build - deployment/package target does not run

We have a TFS build definition set up where we pass the following extra MSBuild arguments in:
/p:DeployOnBuild=true;DeployTarget=PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder;_PackageTempDir="\\server\build";AutoParameterizationWebConfigConnectionStrings=false
This has been detailed elsewhere as a way to have the published files copied to a specific location instead of generating a deploy package.
This unfortunately does not work on our build server, however if I run the exact same msbuild command line as called by TFS on my dev machine then it works perfectly and copies the output files to the location.
I have checked the log file and there is no errors, it just seems to completely skip the publish/deploy step.
Done building target "_BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput" in project "xyz.csproj".
Target "PrepareForRun" in file "c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets" from project "C:\Builds\2\xyz\xyz build\Sources\xyz.Web\xyz.Web.csproj" (target "CoreBuild" depends on it):
whereas on my local machine, after _BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput target is run the package target runs and deploys the files correctly.
I have tried using different paths and even setting the properties in the project file but it seems to make no difference. My local solution and project files are the same as in the repository that the TFS build is using. Is there something config related on our build server or with the build agent that would cause the packaging target not to run?
I was having a similar problem today and found a fix so it maybe worth a look for you. Here

Why does Nant driven MsBuild compile to different directory on different machines?

I wrote a Nant script that executes MSBUILD.exe to compile a project on my dev machine. On my dev machine, the projects builds its output to bin\x86\Release and my Nant script zips up the contents of that directory. I then commit everything to SVN and let TeamCity run the Nant script that executes MSBUILD.exe to compile the project and zip the output, but the output is created in bin\Release and the zip file is empty because it looks in bin\x86\Release. Why does this happen?
When I make changes to the configuration and platform in VS.NET 2008, I do not see the project file light up as being changed. Are these settings stored in the project file, solution file, or user configuration file and therefore not carried over to the build server?
Quick fix: You can use the flag /property:OutDir=bin\x86\Release
You would have to find root cause of this. Probably configuration is incorrect. You can change configuration explicitly to something like /p:Configuration=Release
Are you sure ${project.config} point to the same place in both local and TeamCity environments?
The agent are not always running with the sem environment variables as the local machine. So I would start out to check all properties and see where they point in the local machine as well as TeamCity.
As for the /p:Configuration=${project.config}, you can only have one configuration running but you can specify more properties with ; between them:
/p:Configuration=${project.config};OutDir=bin\x86\Release

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