So I have a project set up as a polyrepo, meaning all services and libraries are in different repos.
Now, I've updated the service projects to reference the library project directly when using Debug as the build config in visual studio, and the package on NuGet when building in Release, on Azure DevOps.
The problem I am trying to solve is that my service builds sometimes fail when I've updated the library because the Library build hasn't completed and update NuGet yet.
What are my options here? Is there a way to ensure that the Library build completes first before the service builds start, or something similar?
Since you are using the Release feature in Azure Devops, I suggest that you could split the whole process into two stages (Library Build Stage and Service Build Stage).
For example:
These two stages are connected by After Stage relationship.
Then when the Library Stage completes , the Service Build stage will start.
If the two stages need to specify different files in the build, you could select the target files in the Visual Studio Build task -> Solution.
By the way, if Service Build stage needs to use the build results of Library Build stage, I suggest that you can use the same Self-hosted agents to run the release.
You can define it in Tasks -> Agent Job -> Demands.
Updates:
Since the Service Build and Library Build are two pipelines, you could try the following steps to order the Build running Step.
Step1: Set the CI trigger(continuous integration) in Library Build. This could make sure the commits could trigger the Library Build.
Step2: Disable the CI trigger in Service Build. Then Set the Pipeline trigger in Service Build. You could set the Library Build trigger the Service Build.
In this case, you could make sure that the Service Build will run after the Library Build.
Related
I imported the SmartHotel360 project from azuredevopsdemogenerator.azurewebsites.net and would like to build and release the project however I have certain warnings. I successfully ran the build pipeline but when I want to release it I see this warning: The version provided for the build artifact source is invalid. I do not know from where to take this version. There is no option in the dropdown.
Using the Azure DevOps Services Demo Generator, we can create same SmartHotel360 project as below.
And it will automatically create a build pipeline and release pipeline in SmartHotel360 project. By reviewing the generated release pipeline: SmartHotel360_Website-Deploy, we can see below default primary artifact: Build - _SmartHotel_Petchecker-Web.
Clicking this artifact we will be redirected to a build pipeline which doesn’t exist, so we need to manually delete this artifact and then re-add our own artifact, as below.
Therefore, after successfully running the build pipeline and publishing the artifacts, we can create a new release, as below.
For the source alias you just need to set the Build Name, also on the version it will be automatically picked if you already have a successful build
So I'm currently trying to proceed through the release pipeline portion of an Azure DevOps Fundamentals for beginners course on Udemy, and the goal is to deploy the code for a small webapp game called "Flatris" for the purpose of showing how Azure works.
I've been following along with all the steps as per the course, but when I run the release pipeline build, it consistently fails with the message:
"Error: No package found with specified pattern: D:\a\r1\a***.zipCheck if the package mentioned in the task is published as an artifact in the build or a previous stage and downloaded in the current job."
So far, I've double checked the function of the Web App resource provided through Azure, it's showing traffic when I try and run the pipelines, so it's not the problem(i think), I've double checked the repositories, and they seem to be functioning well(i think), I'm unsure about the artifacts and whether that may be the source of the problem, but theres not enough specificity in the error logs for me to accurately isolate where the problem is.
I don't know if anyone else has managed to get pat this problem, or if it's unique to me with something I'm doing, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
Error: No package found with specified pattern: D:\a\r1\a***.zip
Check if the package mentioned in the task is published as an artifact in the build or a previous stage and downloaded in the current job."
When we use release pipeline for our application, we have to specify the artifacts that make up the application. And the artifact is a deployable component of your application. It is typically produced through a Continuous Integration or a build pipeline. Azure Pipelines releases can deploy artifacts that are produced by a wide range of artifact sources such as Azure Pipelines build, Jenkins, or Team City.
According to the error message, it seems you are using the build pipeline as artifact resource in the release pipeline.
To resolve this issue, we need make sure we have use the Publish build artifacts task to publish the artifacts to the Azure Pipelines in the build pipeline.
Then select the above build pipeline when we select the artifact source type:
In this case, Azure release pipeline will download the artifact automatically when we execute the release pipeline, the artifact will be save in the default folder D:\a\r1\a. That will resolve your issue.
A release can be triggered when the build artifact is available as shown in screenshot below.
So does this necessitate that for the release pipeline (configured for build artifact) to get triggered, the build pipeline must have the "publish artifact" task?
Agree with Shayki Abramczyk, the answer is No. But I think maybe you need more descriptions to help you understand ~
In your situation, you set build pipeline as release pipeline's artifact. If you've checked this document you would find these statements:
1.When authoring a release pipeline, you link the appropriate artifact sources to your release pipeline. For example, you might link an Azure Pipelines build pipeline or a Jenkins project to your release pipeline.
2.Note from here:
You must include a Publish Artifacts task in your build pipeline. For XAML build pipelines, an artifact with the name drop is published implicitly.
3.Auto-trigger releases feature(CD trigger in artifact): New releases can be created automatically when new builds (including XAML builds) are produced. See Continuous Deployment for details. You do not need to configure anything within the build pipeline. See the notes above for differences between version of TFS.
To sum up, the artifact source here represents a build pipeline instead of the outputs of a build pipeline. So when you enabled the CD trigger in artifact(in your situation a build pipeline), the release is triggered whenever a new build finishes. And this behavior won't be affected by whether the build pipeline has Publish Artifact task to publish the outputs from it.
For the 2.Note: It can be considered as we must include a Publish Artifacts task in build pipeline so that the release pipeline can access the outputs of build pipeline. And then we can deploy the outputs(.dll/.exe or what) to target machines/environments. (Actually we think the must in document should be replaced with It's recommended to/should)
Publish Artifacts task make the build+release process meaningful. Cause if our release pipeline can't access outputs of build pipeline, what should we use to deploy? But whether this task exists or not won't actually affect the CD trigger. (Just like the third statement:You do not need to configure anything within the build pipeline)
The answer is No, the release will be triggered when the build finished even he doesn't have Publish Artifacts step.
I have a VSTS project and I'm setting up CI/CD at the moment. All fine, but I seem to have 2 options for the publishing step:
Option 1: it's a task as part of the CI Build, e.g. see build step 3 here:
https://medium.com/#flu.lund/setting-up-a-ci-pipeline-for-deploying-your-angular-application-to-azure-using-visual-studio-team-f686c8f190cf
Option 2: The build phase produces artifacts, and as part of a separate release phase these artifacts are published, see here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/build-release/actions/ci-cd-part-1?view=vsts
Both options seem well supported in the MS documentation, is one of these options better than the other? Or is it a case of pros & cons for each and it depends on circumstances, etc?
Thanks!
You should definitely use "Option 2". Your build should not make changes in your environments whatsoever, that is strictly what a "release" is. That link you have under "Option 1" is the wrong way to do it, a build should be just that, compiling code and making artifacts, not actually deploying code.
When you mesh build/releases together, you make it very difficult to debug build issues. Since your code is always being released, you really have to disable the "deploy" step to get any idea of what was built before you deployed.
Also, the nice thing about creating an artifact is you have a deployable package, and if in the future you need to rollback to a previous working version, you have that ready to go. Using the "build only" strategy, you'd have to revert your code or make unnecessary backups to achieve this.
I think you'll find any new Microsoft documentation pointing you toward this approach, and VSTS is completely set up like this. Even the "Configure Continuous Delivery in Azure..." feature in Visual Studio 2017 will create a build and a release.
Almost all build tasks are the same as release tasks, so you can deploy the app after building the project in build process.
Also there are many differences between release and build, for example, many environments, deployment group phase in release.
So which way is better is per to your detail requirement, for example, if build > deploy > other process is simple, you can do it just in build.
Regarding Publish artifact task, it is used to publish the files to VSTS server or other place (e.g. shared folder), which can be used in release as Artifact (Click Add artifact > Build in release definition), you also can download them for troubleshooting, for example, if you are using Hosted Agent that you can’t access, but you want to get some files (e.g. build result), you can add publish artifact task to publish to VSTS server, then download them (Open build result > Artifacts)
I have a Visual Studio solution housing an Azure Cloud Service with the following projects:
CloudService
CloudServiceRole
Tests
Where the Tests project is a standard MSTest project that contains unit tests for the business logic in the CloudServiceRole project.
The code is stored in Visual Studio Online and I have hooked up the automated CI build deployment that Azure offers. When I check in code, my staging deployment of the cloud service is automatically updated. However, the Tests project is never even built during the CI builds! This, of course, means that no unit tests run during the build as the "run unit tests" part of the build process finds no assemblies with tests.
My goal is to change this so the tests project is built and all the unit tests executed.
Looking at the MSBuild arguments that the CI deployment process uses, it appears that only the CloudService:Publish target is executed. The CloudService project has no dependency on the Tests project so MSBuild never even builds the latter.
What I have tried
I cannot manually add a CloudService->Tests dependency because when I add dependencies on projects that are not Cloud Service Role projects, I get an error during build (The item "C:\a\src\MyProject\Tests\Tests.csproj" in item list "ProjectReferenceWithConfiguration" does not define a value for metadata "Name".) and I cannot add a CloudServiceRole->Tests dependency because that would make a circular dependency.
Instructing MSBuild to build the full solution by manually adding a /t:Build parameter resulted in yet another error: C:\a\bin\ServiceDefinition.csdef: Need to specify the physical directory for the virtual path 'Web/' of role Web.
Adding the Tests project as a separate build target, alongside the solution, results in the tests getting built! However, at the same time, it disables the Continuous Deployment functionality: More than one solution found. Continuous Deployment skipped.
Trying to make a fake Cloud Service Role project that references the Tests project but has zero instances configured results in a build error: WAT100: The following roles 'Tests.FakeRole' have an instance count of 0. Instance count of 0 is not supported in deployments to Microsoft Azure. Attempting to disable this validation results in a build error due to a defect in the Azure SDK.
You need to run a Build and a Publish separately. I ran into the same problem on my VSO (now VSTS) project and this fixed it. This happens because your cloud service doesn't depend on your unit test project.
1) Visual Studio Build (or MSBuild) action with arguments /t:Build (clean here)
2) Visual Studio Build (or MSBuild) action with arguments /t:Publish (do not clean here)
Note: I had to run these actions separately (not /Build;Publish) otherwise I got an error about the cloud service entry point.
Pieced this together from this question and from here and here.
One workaround that appears to bring results is to add a pre-MSBuild script to the build definition and explicitly build the Tests project in that script.
:: This is used as a pre-build script in Continuous Deployment builds because on their own, they do not build the Tests project.
"c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" %~dp0\..\..\Tests\Tests.csproj /t:Build /p:Configuration=Debug;Platform=AnyCPU;OutDir="%~dp0\..\..\..\..\bin\\"
It appears to do the job, although I am not sure what side-effects I should be aware of. My main concern is that the binaries from this build go into the same directory as the binaries from the Cloud Service build - is there perhaps some possibility of conflict here?