I have been looking everywhere to get some guidance on MSI/exe files to MSIX package using Azure DevOps pipelines. However, I am unable to find any information regarding that.
There are plenty of articles explaining the conversion process by using the tool but I am trying to automate the conversion process.
Can someone direct me to the right path and if its even possible to convert the files into MSIX package using pipelines.
Pipeline will help us alleviate issues regarding new binaries (in exe or msi format) being available and they can be package into an MSIX through pipeline.
Idea is to use these packages, create VHDX and attach it to an Azure virtual desktop (using MSIX app attach).
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
I assume you are referring to the MSIX Packaging Tool. This tool is not recommended to be used if you have access to the source code.
The MSIX Packaging Tool is intended to be used by IT pros to create MSIX packages for apps where they don't have the source code. It is not designed for developers.
If you have access to your source code, which it sounds like you do, then you can use Visual Studio or third-party tools like Advanced Installer to create the MSIX package.
This older SO question has more details: How to build an MSIX from comandline
Related
For some reason(about the digital signature of the desktop bridge app, see here), I can't use visual studio to package my project. Makeappx seems to be able to do this, but those commands are too complex for me. Is there an easier way to achieve this?
Or to put it another way, how can I directly refer to the EXE file (which I can sign) rather than just the project in the application package project?
If Visual Studio is too complicated I recommend you get the free Express edition from Advanced Installer.
In the link include you can find a video that shows how to build an MSIX package (for bundle just change the radio button option from Builds page).
Additional info -
Publishing an MSIX package in the MS store.
Disclaimer: I work on the team building Advanced Installer.
I am new to Windows powershell and Visual Studio. I followed the azure developer guide on github(https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell/wiki/Microsoft-Azure-PowerShell-Developer-Guide) till the "Build Solution .Execute tools\Build.ps1" step. Build is failing with 802 errors. How to import the project into visual studio and run the samples? What project is it actually? C# or VB or it just contains cmdlets and sample tests?
There are two parts to the Azure Powershell repository.
Firstly there is the source code, unless you're a developer, or are interested in the inner workings of Azure Powershell, this probably isn't what you are looking for (my apologies if it is!)
As a general overview though, the Build.ps1 configures your machine to build the Azure Powershell cmdlets. The source code is c# and is located here Build.ps1 installs the following -
Install Windows Azure SDK
Install Python 2.7 x86
Install Django
Install Wix 3.8
Make sure that git.exe and wix bin folder are in you PATH environment variable.
Set environment variable EnableNuGetPackageRestore to value true
if you do those things manually, you can then load the project into Visual Studio and compile the cmdlets.
However, the second purpose of that repository is what I suspect you are actually looking for. If you look here you will find the releases of the installers that you can download to install Azure Powershell. Once these are installed on your machine you can browse and configure Azure services via Powershell.
For instance for version 1.0.1 you will find the download for the latest version of Azure Powershell (at the time of writing anyway!)
If you are just looking to learn Powershell and Azure then that is probably the place you want to start.
If you are looking to explore the source code, then that is there also.
We use TeamCity as our CI server (but I imagine this applies to any build server).
We have not installed the azure SDK on the build server and are able to build the projects which use the SDK using the workaround described here.
I now want the server to produce the packages for deployment to Azure, but when I run an MSBuild task to create the packages (as directed here) I get a strange error
error MSB4057: The target "WatGetTargetFrameworkDirectories" does not exist in the project.
which yields few useful google results.
Do I need to install the SDK? Or is this error related to something else?
WatGetTargetFrameworkDirectories is a target from AzureSDKs .targets file. Looks like your error related to Azure SDK.
Except it could be more subtle error related to not very good msbuild Azure Targets. For our own azure packaging we did need to call 2 targets "Clean;CorePublish", not just "Publish". Maybe this will also help you.
Side note: why you don't want to install AzureSDK on TeamCity BuildAgent? Build agents made exactly for that - to have frameworks you need for build. Also 1.6 and 1.7 AzureSDKs can be installed side-by-side.
I was just upgrading my project from sdk 1.3 to 1.7 and I noticed that now when I build the application the package(cspkg) is not created with the build. I have go click on publish to create a package. Is there a way to tell VS to create a package everytime a build is triggered.
Also using msbuild is there a way to do the same thing. I have multiple projects under a solution, Most of which are just libraries and then there is this azure app. Is there a way to specify a single msbuild statement with params to tell the azure app to create the package as well as build the other projects. Also when I specify debug the debug package should be created and when I specify release switch the release package should be created.
How could I do the same thing on my build server as well where I have a .proj file which specifies the sln to build. How could I mention a switch to build the package there.
Thanks,
Kunal
You can configure CSPACK command (Be sure to have CSPACK.exe launched from SDK 1.7 Path otherwise you will get some schema related errors with SDK 1.6 project) as Post Build event in your Windows Azure Application Build settings. This way when you will build, after successful build CSPACK command will run and package your application. Same way you can configure your MSBuild configuration. I just tested and it worked for me.
Visit this MSDN article on packaging a cloud service to learn more.
You can do this using msbuild as well. See the Resolution section of this question.
I developed a web-site on ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 platform. And additional I have 2 win services. My task is to build install package. I decided that Visual Studio install projects are not met my requirements. I design my own installer for this project, because I need to resolve many question and problem in install process. My problem: I need to deploy web-site into IIS, but I don't know how to do it easy. I found Microsoft tool as Web Deployment Tool, but I didn't find any documentation. And must I include this tool into my installer for deployment at destination customer? Another side I found SDC Tasks Library and it looks like a solution for me. But I saw many topics where people had problems and because the project was dead anybody couldn't help them. I know it is a long story... My question: how can I deploy the web-site from another program (I know that IIS versions have some differences and it is another headache), set a virtual directory, application pool (very important), a type of authentification and so forth ???
Thanks.
Use Wix for installers.
This article seems to cover what you want:
Automating Web deployment on IIS with WIX.