How to copy a build to test server? - continuous-integration

Question

Hope someone can assist me with this. Have TeamCity up and running and doing builds on various projects. I'd like to be able to copy/deploy a successful TeamCity ran build to a test server automatically.
I was thinking of using PowerShell to do this but, am open to other ideas. Can some provide me with info on how I can accomplish this.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I use WGet. Here are the instructions for forming the team city URL. You can do a WGet in powershell, but if you only wanted powershell for this functionality, you can just use a plain wget utility for windows.
EDIT: Here is an example from our QA deployment (names changed to protect the guilty):
"C:\Program Files (x86)\NcFTP\wget.exe" "http://teamcityserver.domain.com:8111/guestAuth/repository/download/bt6/.lastFinished/Artificat.ear"
The location of the wget isn't relevant, that is just where it happens to be. The guestAuth part of the parameter specifies the authentication type (in our case we enabled guest authorization to not have to bother with passwords - it is an internal server only anyway and protected by firewalls). The options are in the documentation I linked to.
The other interesting feature of the parameters is the bt6. That is the unique key of the build, and is different for every project. You can discover what it is by navigating the team city website to the configuration of that build - it will be there. There are also instructions for referencing the configuration by name, but we found that was too verbose to bother with.

Answer 2

I've been implementing this for our applications today. Using msbuild. I have found this very useful as we can add in custom steps such as modifying config files, archiving live builds and notifying people of changes.
Here is a build script you may find useful. It precompiles the application and then copies it into the deploy directory.
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" DefaultTargets="Deploy">
<PropertyGroup>
<WebsitePublishDirectory>Artifacts\Website</WebsitePublishDirectory>
<WebsiteDeployDirectory>\\SERVERNAME\Path\to\web\root</WebsiteDeployDirectory>
<WebsiteProject>[Project name here]</WebsiteProject>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="Deploy">
<RemoveDir Directories="$(WebsitePublishDirectory)" />
<AspNetCompiler
VirtualPath="test"
PhysicalPath="$(WebsiteProject)"
TargetPath="$(WebsitePublishDirectory)"
Force="true"
Debug="false" />
<ItemGroup>
<PublishedFiles Include="$(WebsitePublishDirectory)\**" />
</ItemGroup>
<Copy SourceFiles="#(PublishedFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(WebsiteDeployDirectory)\%(RecursiveDir)" />
</Target>
</Project>

Answer 3

You could also install a TeamCity agent on the test server. That's actually how TeamCity was intented to be used.

Answer 4

I created a Post Build Script in Visual Studio like this:
c:\TeamCityBuild\pt_build.bat
exit 0
Then on the TC-server I have a .bat that looks like this:
net use r: \192.168.16.85\WebSite password /USER:domain.com\administrator
xcopy "C:\TeamCityBuild\path\WebSite*" "r:\" /R /Y /E
r: \192.168.16.85\WebSite /DELETE
if errorlevel 1 goto buildFAILED
:buildOK
echo Wehej!!!
exit 0
:buildFAILED
echo Oh NOOO!!!
exit 1
'R:' is a mapped drive to the test server.
The error handling is only needed to avoid script errors when someone builds the project on a environment without the correct folder structure.
So far everyting is working great!