SlowCheetah transform fails using Visual Studio Online - azure

We're using SlowCheetah to do app.config transforms for a project. However, when trying to move the build process to Visual Studio Online, I can no longer build the solution. The build fails because the .dll.config file cannot be found. I believe this is caused by SlowCheetah.
Here's what we're using: SlowCheetah 2.5.10.6. As the build template I'm using the TfvcTemplate.12.xaml process. My NuGet version is 2.8 and Package Restore is enabled for the solution.
I've come across a few similar issues but most solutions apply to VS2012 or older versions of SlowCheetah and NuGet.
Update June 17
After looking more carefully at the log file generated by MSBuild, I found that the transform succeeds, and when my project is built, I see this line in the log: Copying file from "obj\Release\Assembly.Worker.csproj-sc.App.config" to "C:\a\bin\Assembly.Worker.dll.config".
However, I also have an Azure cloud service project, which is built next. Here's where the build fails.
This is what I find in the log: C:\a\src\ProjectFolder\Assembly.Azure\Assembly.Azure.ccproj(101,5): error MSB3030: Could not copy the file "..\Assembly.Worker\bin\Release\Assembly.Worker.dll.config" because it was not found.
So apparently SlowCheetah creates a transformed config file and saves it as a .csproj-sc.app.config file, while the Azure project looks for a normal app.config file. Interestingly, building the Azure project locally works fine.

In the end I fixed the problem by changing the SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets file in the Properties folder.
At line 157 I inserted the following code to copy the transformed file to the path that Azure expects:
<Copy Condition=" '$(_Sc_HasAppConfigTransform)'=='true' "
SourceFiles="$(__SC_IntermediateAppConfig)"
DestinationFiles="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\bin\Release\$(MSBuildProjectName).dll.config"
SkipUnchangedFiles="true" ContinueOnError="false" />

Related

Xamarin Android build fails in AppCenter (Azure) with Error APT0000

Xamarin Android project is built well locally on Windows/Mac, but fails on AppCenter/Azure pipelines with weird errors like:
Error APT0000: resource style/Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar (aka com.companyname.build_testing_andx:style/Theme.AppCompat.Light.DarkActionBar) not found.
Error APT0000: style attribute 'attr/colorPrimary (aka com.companyname.build_testing_andx:attr/colorPrimary)' not found.
This mostly looks like lack of necessary libraries to restore by Nuget.
As it appeared after long investigation, and no matter how the solution sounds dumb, but the solution might save some time for someone.
The reason such projects can't be build on AppCenter/Azure (and that might be related to any other Visual Studio project) is that Nuget packages not being restored successfully.
The problem is that when using Nuget task, it doesn't indicate any issues. It just finishes well.
But it happens because the sources don't include *.sln file, thus Nuget doesn't have a point where to start from for the packages restoring.
Sometimes it might happen when this file is just not included into sources pushed to repository by number of reasons.
*(It's weird because the builds often project-oriented, and when working on Visual Studio it automatically creates the .sln file (not necessary around the project folder), so sometimes it might just be not included and you have no idea what's causing the errors above).
So, just to be sure you've got your *.sln file added to your repository and it's available for the AppCenter/Azure build.

How do I make sure TFS is using most recent Azure SDK?

I have a Visual Studio 2013/Azure SDK 2.3 solution with a WebRole ccproj project where I am trying to automate the build and packaging to a .cspkg file.
If I build the solution on my dev machine and then right-click project and do "Package" (with Cloud/Release) everything works fine.
However, on the TFS Build Controller machine, I get the following error:
C:\Builds\439\MyPortal\Dev-MyPortal\bin\Debug\ServiceDefinition.csdef: Cannot find the physical directory 'C:\Builds\439\MyPortal\MyGateway' for virtual path MyGateway/.
This seems to indicate that the TFS build server is using the old Azure SDK 1.7 (and before) behavior for site physicalDirectory declarations:
<Site name="SolovisPortal" physicalDirectory="..\..\..\SolovisPortal">
I have the above definition in my ServiceDefinition.csdef. Another problem is that it looks like the ServiceDefinition.csdef is being overwritten into the same place for all 4 of my ccproj projects in the Solution.
Note: The build works fine if I eliminate "/t:Publish /p:TargetProfile=Cloud" from the MSBuild arguments.
Really, all I want to do is create the cspkg file for 2 of the 4 ccproj in the solution (just want to "Package" as opposed to "Publish").
Update (4/9/2014)
I am able to build the Azure package from a command-line on my local machine using cspack:
cspack MyPortalAzure\bin\Release\ServiceDefinition.csdef /out:test.cspkg /useCtpPackageFormat
However, my cspkg is 18MB, but it I manually "Package" the cspkg through Visual Studio it is only 15MB. Is VS doing something special to compress the file?

Deploying WPF Application with 3rd Party DLLs

I've been extremely frustrated trying to deploy a C#/WPF application I've created that has some references to 3rd party DLLs. I created a folder in the project, called lib, where I placed all of these DLLs. In VS2012, I added the references by browsing to that folder, and selecting all the DLLs. Copy Local is set to true for all. Everything is fine when I build and run, but when I choose publish, and create a OneClick Installer, things aren't so smooth. During the publish wizard, I set it to install from disk, and set it to never check for updates. I take that folder, place it on a flash drive, plug it into another PC, run the setup, and it throws an Exception. I believe I know what is happening, but I cannot figure out how to package this in order to deploy it correctly.
One of my DLLs is a C# wrapper to a DLL that is designed for a C++ project. We'll say, Application requires DLL1 and DLL1 requires DLL2. DLL2 cannot be added as a reference in the project because is not a .NET DLL. DLL1 requires DLL2 to be in the same folder in order to pick it up. I'm using CefSharp which wraps the Chromium Embedded Framework.
I've tried placing the required DLLs for CefSharp.dll in the publish/Application Files directory, but it did not work. I noticed that all of the DLLs that are there from VS2012 have a .deploy extension on them, I even went and added that extension on to see if it was scanning for that to pick up, but it did not work either. This is my first time doing development and deployment for a Windows application and all of the tutorials on MSDN or blog posts I've read do not seem to cover this case, and I do not see any other options in the deployment manager to handle these types of cases.
If it helps, the Exception Code that is thrown is: CLR20r3
When I catch and display Exception, all of the info I am provided basically says CefSharp.dll or one of it's dependencies cannot be loaded. Which I've gotten before when DLL2 was not in the same folder as DLL1.
Can anyone provide help on how to deploy from VS2012 with a situation like this?
Thanks in advance!
Edit: Info Update
I was attempting to push a debug build version to a test machine without Visual Studio installed. When building for CefSharp or any other C++ Runtime DLL, it will look for all of the Debug versions of the DLL which are usually the same name, but with the letter 'd' added to the end. As mentioned below, the Debug version of the C++ Runtime is not redistributable. Not that you can't manually add those DLLs to your project and set them as Copy Always, but that's kind of a hack job. I started a new project from scratch, added all Release versions of the DLLs, built, and everything was fine.
I've been tearing my hair out trying to fix this very problem this morning and eventually found the solution. It seems you already know which DLLs etc. you need for CefSharp to work but I thought I would run through this in case anyone else is having the same problem. I have a C# WPF application and I'm using CefSharp as the web view. I'm using CefSharp v1 because I need the JavaScript -> C# bridge they provide which isn't yet implemented in v3. Here are the rough steps I went through in setting up the project (I'm using VS2013 but this will probably work in VS2012).
Installing CefSharp
Install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet (I'm using v1.25.7)
That should put the relevant files in $(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef
Configuring Build
To get the CefSharp DLLs to copy to our build folders, right-click on your project, select Properties -> Build Events and enter the following in the "Post-build event command line":
xcopy "$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef*" "$(TargetDir)" /s /y /i
That should now copy all of the required DLLs from the cef folder as well as the devtools_resources.pak file and the locales folder plus its contents. I require them in my project as I need the chromium dev tools.
Double-check your project references contain CefSharp and CefSharp.Wpf. That should have been taken care of by NuGet.
Taking care of Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files
I didn't want the user to have to download the whole Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files as part of the deployment so through Visual Studio, add the folder Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT and add the 3 DLLs (msvcp110.dll, msvcr110.dll, vccorlib110.dll) from the following folder on your machine to the folder you just created in your project:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC110.CRT
Select the 3 DLL files in Visual Studio, right-click -> properties. Make sure Build Action is set to "None" and Copy to Output Directory is set to "Do not copy". Now you need to add another post-build event to make sure these are copied properly (i.e. copied to the root so they sit alongside the CEF dlls and your project exe) for debug.
Right-click on your project, select Properties -> Build Events and enter the following in the "Post-build event command line" just after your other xcopy command for CEF:
xcopy "$(ProjectDir)Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT*.*" "$(TargetDir)" /s /y /i
At this point, everything should be building. To publish the app with ClickOnce, I need it to push all of the CEF DLLs out as well as ensuring the files/folders required for chromium dev tools are present. If you don't need the dev tools or all of the DLLs then you can tweak this accordingly.
Ensuring CEF and C++ runtime files are deployed with ClickOnce
Right click your project in Visual Studio and select "unload project".
Right click and select to edit the csproj file.
Before the closing </Project> tag add this
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef\**\*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(ProjectDir)Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT\**\*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
That will add everything from the cef folder into the project and make sure the C++ binaries are copied to the root of the project on deployment. In my case for CEF, I'm using the \**\* syntax at the end of the Include and %(RecursiveDir) to ensure all of the files are copied as well as the locales folder with its contents and structure preserved. Having set <Visible>false</Visible> you won't see the items in the solution explorer.
Relax
Now if you publish your app, it should copy over all of the required files and folders.
You could try this which solved a similar issue for me:
Add the DLL's that are not .NET libraries to the solution as files:
Right click project > Add > Existing Item
Then set their build action to Content and "Copy to output directory" to "Copy Always".
That way the libraries will be included in the output directory.
Since you already tried manually adding the suspect dll and it still does not work, the next thing I would do is run fusion and see what it really is complaining about, in other words what exactly is the dependency that can not be loaded. Here is a good tutorial on how to hunt down these types of errors:
Back to Basics: Using Fusion Log Viewer to Debug Obscure Loader Errors
Maybe you can work it out from the https://github.com/Code52/DownmarkerWPF sources?
They have at least a working ClickOnce installer for their app embedding CefSharp. I know because that's the way it got installed on my machine!
update just saw in comments that it's the VC Redist that you say you are missing then Distributing the Visual C++ Runtime Libraries (MSVCRT) seems relevant.
Also I seem to remember something vaguely about that for "VCRedist reasons" you are not supposed to distribute debug versions of your application. Can't you just switch from a Debug to a Release version? With this I think you can either bundle the needed VCRedist files as suggested in the CefSharp FAQ or add VCRedist as a prerequisite in your installer. DownmarkerWPF does it with their WIX installer setup which you can find on a branch in their GitHub repo. Something similar is AFAIK possible with the VStudio bundled installer if that's what you use.
Thanks to Barrie's answer to this, it helped me greatly. I'm using his answer below, but updating it to work for the latest CEF using Visual Studio 2015.
NOTE: I am only building/targeting the x86 platform. You may need to change or include x64 in the copy commands below to suit your needs.
Installing CefSharp
Install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet (I'm using v51.0.0)
NuGet Library After Install
That should put the relevant files in
$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.51.0.0\CefSharp (CefSharp.Wpf)
$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Common.51.0.0\CefSharp (CefSharp.Common)
$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF (Cef x86 redist)
$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x64.3.2704.1432\CEF (Cef x64 redist)
Configuring Build
To get the CefSharp DLLs to copy to our build folders... I don't believe this is necessary anymore with the later versions of CefSharp. I found that I didn't need any of the "Post-build event command-line" xcopy stuff to get Click-Once to ship it out. (And yes, DevTools works too!)
Taking care of Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files
(Switched to VCR 2013) I didn't want the user to have to download the whole Visual C++ 2013 Runtime Files as part of the deployment, so through Visual Studio, add the folder lib\Microsoft.VC120.CRT and add the 3 DLLs (msvcp110.dll, msvcr110.dll, vccorlib110.dll) from the following folder on your machine to the folder you just created in your project:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64
(Didn't see them in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\redist)
At this point, everything should be building. To publish the app with ClickOnce, we need it to push all of the CEF DLLs. You can tweak this accordingly...
Ensuring CEF and C++ runtime files are deployed with ClickOnce
Right click your project in Visual Studio and select "unload project".
Right click and select to edit the csproj file.
Before the closing tag add the following:
<!-- BEGIN: CUSTOM ITEM GROUP INCLUDES INTO THE PROJECT (SO CLICK-ONCE PUBLISHES THEM) -->
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\*" Exclude="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\x86\**\*;$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\locales\**\*.pak">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\en-GB.*;$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\en-US.*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\x86\**\*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Common.51.0.0\CefSharp\x86\**\CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="$(ProjectDir)lib\Microsoft.VC120.CRT\**\*">
<Link>%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
<Visible>false</Visible>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
<!-- END: CUSTOM ITEM GROUP INCLUDES INTO THE PROJECT (SO CLICK-ONCE PUBLISHES THEM) -->
That will add everything from the cef folder into the project and make sure the C++ binaries are copied to the root of the project on deployment. Having set false you won't see the items in the solution explorer.
REMEMBER: I am only building/targeting the x86 platform. You may need to change or include x64 in the copy commands below to suit your needs.
Publish
Now if you publish your app, it should copy over all of the required files and folders.
(EXTRA INFO) Supporting Older Operating Systems Info Below
If you need to use CefSharp for older machines (XP & Vista), simply
install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet using the older v47.0.0 version and change your .NET targeting to .NET 4.0 Client Profile.
Chromium ended support for XP and Vista in April 2016, CefSharp version 47 (or there abouts) still had support for it.
Another note on a problem and fix for XP:
There is a Chromium issue for XP deployments. Below is the article describing the fix followed by steps to deploy fix for JBCB.
Here's the link to the article:
https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/issues/1787
...in it you'll see a reference to download a "dbghelp.dll". Download and extract.
YOU CAN TAKE A POST-INSTALL APPROACH LIKE BELOW OR CHOOSE TO INCLUDE THE DLL ALONG WITH YOUR OTHER PUBLISHED FILES. I'M CHOOSING NOT TO DEPLOY THE EXTRA DLL AND ONLY DEPLOY ON XP MACHINES (WE ONLY HAVE FEW) MANUALLY.
Take these steps to fix deployment on an XP machine:
Install the CefSharp Browser on the XP machine (via Click-Once)
Copy the "dbghelp.dll"
Paste it in the local install directory on the XP machine (per the instructions in previous link: along side the "libcef.dll" file).
NOTE: For click-once installs, will be in a sub-folder under this location:
C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Apps\2.0\<auto-gen ostificated ID>
Read very carefully the official list of CefSharp dependencies - there are a lot of them! You need to get them all into the ClickOnce bin folder somehow.
Here is how I solved it:
Before deploying, install the latest version of Visual C++ Redistributable. on each PC you are deploying to (using group policy or just manually).
Start with a blank test project.
Add project references to CefSharp, CefSharp.Core, etc.
Add each dependency into a single folder in the project directory to keep them organised (Files\CefSharp\).
Ensure all files are configured with Build Action: Content, and Copy to Output Dir: Copy always.
Make a function Initalise_CefSharpFiles() to copy the files/folders into the bin root folder (where CefSharp looks for them). For example, copy from: Bin\Files\CefSharp\* to: Bin\*.
And finally at run time, call Initalise_CefSharpFiles() once after the app loads, and before initialising CefSharp's settings.

The "SlowCheetah.Xdt.TransformXml" task could not be loaded from the assembly

After installing Slow Cheeath (v. 2.5.10.3) to two projects in my solution, I am receiving the following error:
"The "SlowCheetah.Xdt.TransformXml" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Users
\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2\SlowCheetah.Xdt.dll. Could
not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild
\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2\SlowCheetah.Xdt.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot
find the file specified. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the
assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public
class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask. ISA.IMPD.FalseAlarm.Web.Portal"
I have removed both projects in their entirety (along with Slow Cheetah), re-installed both projects (along with Slow Cheetah), and Rebuilt the solution to no avail. Can anyone help with this type of error?
In my case the error occured while compiling a web project. The folder
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2
was empty. All the SlowCheetah components were in SlowCheetah\v1 folder instead. I've copied all files from V1 folder to v2.5.10.2 and everything compiled and transformed fine. To make non web projects compile, I also had to delete V1 folder as suggested by Whoever in this thread.
This was a brand new installation of the SlowCheetah Extension and I did not expect the v1 folder to exist at all. I believe this was a bug in the extension installation for Visual Studio 2012.
delete
AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v1
I seem to have found to solution to this problem.
Here's what I did:
You need to close Visual Studio, then navigate to:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Extensions
Delete the cache file that has the latest date and time
Open Visual Studio and remove Slow Cheetah from the Solution level
Re-install Slow Cheetah from the solution level to the desired projects.
This was failing on our build server, so I changed the revision number from:
<sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal Condition=" '$(sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal)'=='' ">$(LocalAppData)\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2\</sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal>
To:
<sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal Condition=" '$(sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal)'=='' ">$(LocalAppData)\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.3\</sc-MSBuildLibPathLocal>
Why it was pointed to v2.5.10.2 is a mystery, but I'm definitely using v2.5.10.3! Looks like the nuget package itself has the bug in it.
I resolved it like this:
Uninstall slowcheetah => Tools>Extensions and Updates
click OK when VS asks you to restart VS.
in "C:\Users\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah" remove the 'v1' folder (which windows automatically creates when restarting your VS) (here be dragons..)
reïnstall slowcheetah (see step 1) => a new folder v2.5.10.2 will be created.
Again, click OK when he asks to restart
Build your solution
Regards,
Peter
This problem went away for me after using the preview transformation feature in the context menu. Originally suggested here.
FYI this was on VS 2010 Premium.
Having multiple versions can lead to conflicts.
In my case I have installed both Microsoft.VisualStudio.SlowCheetah by Microsoft and SlowCheetah by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi. After uninstalling the package from Microsoft everything went well.
I have deleted the old files in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v1. I also needed to upgrade Visual Studio 2012 to update 4 to make it work.
I was able to fix this issue by doing the following:
Uninstalling the SlowCheetah extension from the TOOLS > Extensions and Updates... menu
Closing Visual Studio
Deleting all files in the "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Extensions" folder
Opening Visual Studio
Reinstalling SlowCheetah from the TOOLS > Extensions and Updates... menu (which requires a Visual Studio restart)
This is using Visual Studio 2012 Premium with Update 4 and SlowCheetah version 2.5.10.
If you're getting this error on a TFS Build Server (in my case TFS Express 2013) then you will need to copy over the files from your local machine
C:\Users\SWEAVER\AppData\local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah
on your machine to whichever user your TFS build is running under
C:\users\TFSBuild\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah
Please note AppData is a hidden directory that you may not see, but just type the name and hit enter and it will come up.
I'm using VS2013 so I didn't copy v1 (I think v1 is for VS2012).
The original TFS error I got was :
C:\Builds\1\www.XXXXX.com\RRStore - XXXXX
Silverlight\Sources\RRStore.AdminConsole\Properties\SlowCheetah\SlowCheetah.Transforms.targets
(150): The "SlowCheetah.Xdt.TransformXml" task could not be loaded
from the assembly
C:\Users\TFSBuild\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2\SlowCheetah.Xdt.dll.
Could not load file or assembly
'file:///C:\Users\TFSBuild\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\SlowCheetah\v2.5.10.2\SlowCheetah.Xdt.dll'
or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Confirm that the declaration is correct, that the assembly
and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a
public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask.
Fortunately this error told me exactly where to place the files.
I had the same problem in Visual Studio 2013. Just install SlowCheetah NuGet package:
https://www.nuget.org/packages/SlowCheetah
They've released a new version which brings the installation procedure up to date:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/05/25/whats-new-and-improved-with-the-slowcheetah-extension/
Tired of having to install your NuGet packages manually to get
SlowCheetah to work? We’ve added automatic NuGet installation to help
streamline your process. All you need to install is the latest
extension and SlowCheetah will take care of the rest. When you use
SlowCheetah for the first time in a project, it will prompt you to
install or update NuGet packages. Agree and you’re ready to go!
Close Visual Studio
Install the VISX extension
Open your project.
This version detects if you already have it installed and offers to upgrade.
I would recommend checking in to source control and then doing a compare of your .csproj file to see what changes it made.

Web Deploy to Server with MSBuild

I have a publish profile set up in a VS 2012 project. When I right click on the project in VS, select Publish and click on the [Publish] button, it publishes the project to the server using the settings provided in the Publish Profile.
When I use msbuild and the command line, with the following syntax:
msbuild.exe .\mvc.csproj /p:PublishProfile=DevServer
/p:DeployOnBuild=True /p:Password=MyPassword /p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=true
Then it builds the project, and gives me a message:
Package "mvc.zip" is successfully created as a single file at the following location: file:///c:/code/mvcsite/obj/Debug/Package
And then provides info on how to deploy the package.
How can I deploy from the command line? My ultimate goal is to run the deployment through TeamCity, and am right now trying to get my command line properties correct. However, the most that I can do from the command line right now is to create the deployment package, but not to run the actual deployment. How can I do both (preferably with one statement, to duplicate what happens in VS2012 when I deploy from there)?
Since you are building the .csproj you missed one important property
/p:VisualStudioVersion=11.0
This property was introduced in MSBuild 4.5 to facilitate project sharing between VS 2010 and VS 2012. A drawback; when building the .csproj you need to specify the value for this property. When building the solution file the value can be derived from the solution file version. Read more at my blog http://sedodream.com/2013/01/06/CommandLineWebProjectPublishing.aspx.

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