We are working on a new feature that uses third-party plugins that are stored in a directory named 'Plugins'. One particular plugin expects certain files such as the license file to be in the same directory as the plugin assembly (DLL) based on the assembly's Location value. However, due to shadow copy the license file is in the folder where it was originally deployed and the assembly Location value is the 'Temporary ASP.NET Files' subfolder after shadow copy. Is there any way to disable shadow copy to work around this issue?
I suggested to the plugin provider to use CodeBase rather than Location. They are considering it, but I have to complete this feature now so I can't wait for that code change.
My current desire is to disable shadow copy so the Location property value of the assembly is the location where all the plugin files are initially deployed to.
Cause Azure Function doesn't support web.config, have to find other ways to implement it.
In github there is one way to solve it, and in this comment it says no shadowcopy in v2, maybe you could have a try. Add this directive in your Web Deploy pubxml for your publish profile:
<EnableMsDeployAppOffline>True</EnableMsDeployAppOffline>
Related
I have an azure web role with Azure SDK 2.3.
My web site project website has web.config, which gets copied to bin/debug/website.dll.config properly during build.
But Azure SDK totally fails to include this DLL in the cspkg which causes my role OnStart to fail, since it depends on binding redirects in the web.config to load the correct version of the Azure runtime assemblies. Anyone got any bright idea why cspack isn't including this file and what to do about it?
web.config files are never copied as projectNAme.dll.config!
Only application.config files are copied this way. And yes, for Web Roles nothing beside the regular web.config are automatically copied.
You have to name your configuration file following the name of your main application assembly (i.e. website.dll.config) and then explicitly mark it with Copy Always in the properties panel, section Copy to output folder. Thus the file will be included into the web role package.
I have an executable that I want to be deployed together with my Azure web role. The executable has a configuration file that needs to be included as well.
I tried adding a reference to the executable's project in my web role project, which made the exe file appear in the bin folder of the cspkg, but not the configuration file.
How can I get the configuration file to be included as well?
It seems wrong to include it directly as a content file in the web role project because this file is a build artifact (app.config gets renamed to .config.exe during build).
Thanks!
In an early SDK they added the concept of Role Content folders, or folders you could point to in the service definition file and say anything in this folder, add it to the package and deploy it with the role. If you look at the schema for the Service Definition you'll see these listed on the both the web and worker roles schemas. You can manually add this and point to any location on the local system and anything in that directory will be picked up and included.
<WebRole name="SimpleWeb" vmsize="Small">
...
<Contents>
<Content destination="ConsoleApp">
<SourceDirectory path="c:\src\SimpleWebContent\ConsoleApp\BuildOutput" />
</Content>
</Contents>
</WebRole>
For example, you could point to the output directory of the build for your executable so that anything that is generated by your build for that executable would be included. You can set the destination directory in relation to the app root, but the tricky part is the source directory. Note in my example above the full path is provided. The documentation says that you can use a relative path, but I tried many combinations and the behavior seemed very quirky. The complete path does work.
The VS SDK tools didn't expose this until SDK 1.7 and it's still not very good. Phil Hoff did a blog post on it called "Add Files to your Windows Azure Package using Role Content Folders". Note that when you use this method of adding the files you won't see the content elements appear in your service definition. They get auto injected at package time. If you are doing this as part of a build process that may not happen since VS tooling is doing the injection, but to be fair I didn't try calling cspack directly to see if having the content elements included in the service definition file actually packaged those or not. Also, I found that just adding a new folder and just having files under that folder didn't seem to work. I had to actually add the files by name there, which seemed wrong. I did hack the .ccproj file to use a wildcard on the folder include, which did work, but also seemed like a hack to me.
I have a web role in which I have extended the RoleEntryPoint to do some work that is outside of the scope of the web site. As part of the RoleEntryPoint.Run() my code is required to read from the .config using ConfigurationManager.
While this is a little unusual, using SDK 1.8 I was able to make this work by ensuring that my package included a [The name of my project].dll.config file.
Now that I have upgraded to SDK 2.2 when I try to use .AppSettings or .GetSection() the values are always null, which leads me to believe it is unable to find my file.
I have tried deploying a Worker Role and the .config file still follows the same name pattern that I'm currently using.
I have also tried naming the file WaIISHost.exe.config.
I am aware that ideally this configuration should be included in the .csfg file, but my questions is does anyone know what I should be calling my config file?
UPDATE:
With the help of this question, I now know that the name of the config file it is reading from is E:\base\x64\WaIISHost.exe.Config, but I don't know why this has changed or what I can to overide this.
After much investigation and trial an error I finally have a solution.
The name of the file is still required to be [The name of my project].dll.config, but you need to make sure that this file is in your approot\bin\ directory of your package.
I believe my initial problem was caused by the Copy to Output Directory property being changed to Do Not Copy, although I'm unsure how this happened. If you find yourself in a similar situation you can just add a file with the correct name to your project and set the Copy to Output Directory to be Copy Always.
Once I'd done that however I realised I had another problem. I needed the .config file to have had the config transformations run over it, which this didn't do. To fix this I updated the .ccproj file to have the following:
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- The first two of these targets are what is defined in the base SDK 2.2 targets file. When we upgrade we may need to look reassess this. -->
<CopyRoleFilesDependsOn>
CopyWebRoleFiles;
CopyWorkerRoleFiles;
CopyWebConfigToBin;
</CopyRoleFilesDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="CopyWebConfigToBin">
<!-- We need to copy the transformed Web.config to the bin directory so that the RoleEntryPoint has access to the config settings.-->
<Message Text="Copy %(WebRoleReferences.OutputDir)Web.config tp %(WebRoleReferences.OutputDir)\bin\BackOffice.UI.dll.config" Importance="high" />
<Copy SourceFiles="%(WebRoleReferences.OutputDir)Web.config" DestinationFiles="%(WebRoleReferences.OutputDir)bin\[Name of project].dll.config" />
</Target>
This adds an extra target which waits until all of the other files have been copied to the appropriate directory and then picks up the web.config and puts a copy in the bin directory with the correct name.
Are you able to put the config values into the Azure config file (the .cscfg) rather than using the .config file? You can read the values from the cscfg via the RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue static method.
This page explained why it's called WaIISHost.exe.Config and where you can put it in your project.
http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2010/12/02/new-full-iis-capabilities-differences-from-hosted-web-core/
Like knightpfhor mentioned, you can also use [AssemblyName].dll.config to put these configuration too. It depends on the assembly name of your project, you can check property of your web role project.
I use NLog for logging and now I'm trying to also use it for my SharePoint solution.
How do I instruct WSPBuilder to include NLog.config in WSP and place it in the same folder as solution dll?
EDIT:
Okay, another option is to put it as Web.nlog in SharePoint 80 directory.
Do I need a separate feature for this? What should I write in elements.xml?
I don't think this can't be done - I assume for security reasons.
DLLs can only be deployed to GAC (signed assemblies only) or to the bin directory of the web application (deployed via the solution manifest, along with any required CAS policies).
If you want extra files alongside the assembly in the bin directory, you'll need to copy them manually.
Does NLog.config need to be a separate file, or can the settings be integrated into the web.config file? If you can integrate the settings into the web.config file, you can add a feature receiver and write the necessary settings during the FeatureActivated or FeatureInstalling event to web.config using SPWebConfigModifications (just google for it). You should also make sure to remove the settings in FeatureDeactivating or FeatureUninstalled event.
You should also take a look here :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee413935.aspx
I would also ask these questions :
Is the configuration the same for all the farm ? Only one web application ?
Can you programmaticaly specify NLog configuration ?
Depending on your answers, I will suggest one or more solutions.
The disadvantages with the web.config are
Configuration is deployed on all SharePoint servers (the feature take care of that, but you have to keep that in mind in case of inconsistant behavior)
If you want to modify settings there is no easy way
Each time you modify settings, it will recycle application pool.
What files can we modify so that our solution is still supported by Microsoft?
Is it allowed to customize error pages?
Can we modify the web.config files to use custom HTTPHandlers?
You can certainly edit the web.config file for your sites. The one thing that you should be aware of, however, is that when you start editing files manually on the file system, you will have to remember to manually make those changes across all servers in the farm (assuming a farm exists). In addition to this, when you edit files in the 12 hive, it's important to understand that you will be making a change to all SharePoint sites hosted on the server(s) for which the files were edited.
Personally, if I were going to create a custom error page, I would simply add a <customErrors> section to my web.config. I avoid editing any existing files in the 12 hive, but I have added files (though it's rare).
The customization of the error page is not very easy (or flexible). You can see an example here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jingmeili/archive/2007/04/08/how-to-create-your-own-custom-404-error-page-and-handle-redirect-in-sharepoint-2007-moss.aspx
The web.config can be changed. I used my own HttpModules in addition to the original ones, but I haven't used custom HttpHandlers. IMO it should work if you don't change the original handler (i.e. if you add your handler for a specific type of file not handled by SP).
do not modify any pre-installed files in the 12 hive (Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12)... a service pack may update and overwrite any changes.
Anything in the Content Database (Masterpage, Stylesheets list in ~Catalogs) is available to modify (I would add, instead of update, in case a service pack changes anything) as it sits atop the file system, and is instantly available to any members of the web farm (newly added servers).
Any custom features, added to the 12 hive in the features folder, in a custom/non-microsoft folder (that is, inside the 12\feature folder, do not modify any preinstalled files, but feel free to add a folder for your feature and work within).
Custom features can be developed using the Visual Studio Extensions (VSeWSS), currently available for Visual Studio 2005/2008... benefit being that the output is a feature package (.WSP file) which is designed to be portable across SharePoint. Additionally, the .WSP files are just CAB files with a different extension, offering the ability to be explored by simply renaming them.
For site definitions, Microsoft has a good article about what is supported and unsupported. In short, the only change you can make to the out-of-the-box site definitions is changing the entry in the webtemp.xml file to hidden in order to prevent the site definition from appearing in the site template list. This is something many may be interested in doing.
You may also, of course, copy existing definitions and rename them in order to create new ones.
The complete list of supported and unsupported scenarios for working with custom site definitions can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;898631
Here is the closest I can find to a official response from Microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263010.aspx