I have an MVC Web App that I am trying to get set up with continuous integration on Azure and Visual Studio Online. Basically, the solution has 4 projects within, 3 of which go to supporting the 1 Web App. The problem is, when I set up continuous deployment on Azure, it builds the entire solution and doesn't know which project I want for the root URL.
When I download the drop folder that is produced by the compilation it looks like this.
drop/lots of dlls including the dll of my web app.
drop/_PublishedWebsites
drop/_PublishedWebsites/MyWebApp (including its bin, content, fonts etc)
drop/_PublishedWebsites/MyWebApp_Package
and some other folders as well.
How can I configure the continuous deployment to put my Web App at the root of the website??
Thanks
Looks like the dumb solution is to rename your "main" project to be the alphabetically first project in the solution. Microsoft suggests this, or having only one project per solution. Either way, this is the most reliable and simple way to get the desired effect.
Related
I am publishing my node js site to azure using this tutorial - http://blogs.technet.com/b/sams_blog/archive/2014/11/14/azure-websites-deploy-node-js-website-using-visual-studio.aspx
I get the following error, as mentioned in one of the comments on the blog, any idea what this error is about and how do I fix this ? I am able to run my app locally no issues with that.
Error: InvalidParameter
Parameter name: index
P.s : the site is like a very basic "Hello world" kind of site, this is the first time I am using and deploying to azure too.
I created a new project as a "Blank Azure Node.js web application", and replaced the resulting package.json and .js files with what I had before, and it publishes fine now
All was working fine for and suddenly got the error! I pretty sure it something in the project as it's now happening on vs2013 and vs2015 on different computers.
Its something to do with Templates after a lot of searching. For me Azure TFS CI got things working again if possible for you?
I had this issue with some projects but not with others, all created in a similar way. So I went thought every change and every setting I could until eventually i worked it out. I didn't want to give up and just remake them.
Basically its file paths, the first thing you notice is that it errors very quickly compared to a usual publish, the first thing that is triggered is a build but unlike heavy framework languages there not really much to actually build.
Like all builds for VS it pops out a bin folder take not of where this appears. This is the key, you want this to appear in the root of your deployment usually at the same level as the publish profile.
Before I moved my projects to VS, TFS and Azure, I used to use git and used the azure push and deployment as part of git, so I instinctively structured my folders in the similar fashion with src folder and all the extra VS baggage in the a directory higher.
This is where I noticed bin folder, so re-structured my solution and made changes to .njsproj (notepad) and moved to be inline with source code and re-added it yo my solution.
Technically speaking this a bug within VS as it allows to create the project and specify different locations which is all fine unless you want to build and publish locally.
Once you get your head around what is going on you should be able to solve this problem easily and not make the same mistake in the future. If anyone is still confused comment and ill grab some screen shots.
A website with webjob not deploying to Azure.
I am having an issue getting a website with an associated webjob console application to deploy using continuous deployment via Visual Studio Online. I am using VS2013 with update 4 and latest Azure SDK.
The website, and the associated webjob, will publish to Azure using direct publish for Visual Studio and works perfectly, so I am confident the publish settings are fine.
The solution will build and work locally fine.
The solution, once checked in, will build and (seemingly) deploy fine in VSO (using CI) and Azure notes the build was successful and shows it as 'Active deployment'.
However, the website and associated webjob will not be updated.
When I have browsed the deployed files after the VSO build and deploy on Azure, all that is happening, is the binaries of the console app are being copied into the bin/ folder of the website.
None of the website files are being updated. It is almost as if it is deploying the wrong project!
If I remove the Webjob and just deploy the website, it will build and deploy fine through VSO - the website will update.
It is adding the webjob that causes some issue with the deployment via VSO.
I am confident all steps are correct to add the webjob to the WebApp, with the correct webjobs-list.json being added to the webapp and webjob-publish-settings.json to the Console app - as I said, publishing the website (with the webjob) direct to Azure works perfectly, and both the site and webjob get updated.
I have searched post after post and tried all manner of things, but none have worked.
Given the fact this published fine direct from VS, and also that the build is completing, it would suggest that something is wrong with the VSO Build Defintion.
My first guess would be to change it from building the solution to instead building the web project only, but this does not seem to work.
I have also tried every Output location setting (both for the solution build and the web project build) - the only one that works and the build completes is the solution (.sln) build with 'SingleFolder' set.
I have been battling this for a couple of days now an I'm a bit stumped!
This also happens if you have a static website being deployed using a Visual Studio solution via VSO with an automated build - unless the Visual Studio project / solution containing the website is changed then the actual site contents will not be redeployed.
I think your hunch that it's deploying the wrong project is correct. If you have multiple "deployable" projects in your solution (and the console app is considered deployable, as this is one way you can host/deploy a webjob), you need to tell Kudu which one to deploy.
You can control it adding a new setting under "app settings" on the "configure" tab for the webapp.
The setting you want is Project and it's a relative path from the solution root to the .csproj file of your web project.
Alternatively, you can specify the setting in a custom .deployment file.
Relevant Kudu documentation here
From the documentation:
You can specify the full path to the project file. Note that this is not a path to the solution file (.sln), but to the project file (.csproj/.vbproj). The reason for this is that Kudu only builds the minimal dependency tree for this project, and avoids building unrelated projects in the solution that are not needed by the web project.
Here is an example:
[config]
project = WebProject/WebProject.csproj
I have also tried every Output location setting (both for the solution build and the web project build) - the only one that works and the build completes is the solution (.sln) build with 'SingleFolder' set
That's the root case of problem.
You can't have SingleFolder as it sets the OutDir which mess up with web job packaging.
I had to introduce a wpp.targets files in each of my web app project to create the publish package to a particular path (using PackageLocation)
So, let each project have that and set the setting to AsConfigured (or Per Project) instead of SingleFolder.
See this
I have a solution in Visual Studio Team Services that has 2 Web Applications (specifically one project for WebAPI services and another for the actual site using MVC).
I'm trying to set up continuous delivery to Azure but all the information that I can find seems to assume that you only have a single Web Application within your solution (which seems a little unrealistic for all but the simplest of projects!).
The out of box continuous delivery process seems to just pick and deploy the first Web Application it finds (which isn't necessarily the same project each time!)
I've tried specifying the Deployment Settings file, but that seems to affect the destination rather than the project being deployed since again, it seems to just "pick" a project to deploy, and each time it deploys every single compiled assembly plus all dependencies rather than just the binaries and dependencies of the project actually being deployed, which can cause issues with MVC finding duplicate controller matches for a given name (this can of course be fixed by specifying the namespace of the controllers within the route configuration, but that seems less than ideal, and still doesn't fix the entire problem).
Ideally I'd like to find a way to deploy both projects with a single build, but as a temporary solution I'd be happy with 2 builds that are both triggered by a check-in of the single solution, that each reliably deploy 1 of the 2 Web Applications.
Does anyone know if this is possible? I guess I could write my own custom build template, but I'm hoping there is an easier answer (not least because I can't imagine that this isn't a problem being faced by other people!)
I did find this question TFSPreview.com and Azure continuous deployment for multiple solutions in TFS but since that's quite old and is specifically talking about AzureWebRoleProjects rather than Web Applications being deployed to the newer Azure Websites feature, I'm hoping that there is a more positive answer?
This is possible with multiple build configurations. In addition to Debug and Release you could specify two more, one for each app.
You can find these in Visual Studio at Build -> Configuration Manager. And then in the configurations specify only one of them to be built. Then running MSBuild with that configuration will output only one WebDeploy package.
I have TFS project with multiple .net solutions/ applications within it.
MY TFS looks like:
TFS Project 1
.net solution 1
.net solution 2
.net solution 3
I have to completely re brand one solution/ application including changing all js files/ css/ images etc. What is the best way to handle this in TFS:
create a new branch and leave existing project in branch called Pre-rebrand
label
create a brand new solution... ?
1 issue though is while the rebrand is going on lets say it takes 1 month. If any errors are found in the current application these would need to be fixed and possible merged/ or also done in the new rebranded application.
Thanks
Sounds like a great reason to use a branch to me.
Before we used TFS, we were building our packages locally using visual studio. There was a lot of projects organized into solutions. When we wanted to build the package, we simply located the ccproj project, right click on it and hit “package”.
There is couple of specific in our solution:
We use web roles with multiple web sites and virtual applications and we have them as project dependencies in VS2012 solution
We use config transformations for both web and worker roles. Worker roles transforms was achieved by adding transform target manually to the project file.
We have some additional class library projects – their outputs needs to go in a subfolder of the worker role along with correct configuration files, it is kind of plug-in architecture. We used some xcopy commands to include these non-referenced libraries in our worker roles.
Everything worked smoothly when building in VS 2012 locally.
When migrated to TFS we quickly learned that we won’t be able to replicate the same build process on build server
It turned out that TFS is not preserving solutions structure, more
details here:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsbuild/thread/9ac815c8-5961-4670-a6d0-660a9b66da9c
The project dependency that was solving multiple web sites and
virtual applications in a single role did not work on build server,
probably because of different output directory. We had to add some
hacks in our ccproj and csproj files to get these published and
correctly included in the resulting package.
xcopy commands failed because of different directory structures on
TFS build sever.
We had to force run cspack on TFS build server by explicitly adding
/t:Publish parameter to msbuild command line.
Config transforms for worker roles did not worked, we had to force to
occur using another hacks in the ccproj and csporj files.
There was more issues but those are too detailed. I would keep it on
high level just to illustrate the whole issue. The build somehow
works now, but we have now a lot of hacks in place now.
I have two questions:
Is it possible to configure TFS build server to have exact same
behavior as the local build in VS2012?
Is there any official solution for building azure packages with multiple web sites and virtual applications in a single web role?
I haven't yet tried this on a TFS build server, but the approach outlined in my blog at http://michaelcollier.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/multiple-sites-in-a-web-role/ has been working well. The "trick" is basically to modify the .ccproj file to tap into the CoreBuildDependsOn target, adding logic that will execute MSBuild against the secondary sites. This should also allow config transforms to work.