CSPACK sitePhysicalDirectories being ignored? - azure

Question

Yet another issue with CSPACK...
I have a service definition file like this:
<ServiceDefinition name="core-eur" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition" schemaVersion="2014-01.2.3">
<LoadBalancerProbes>
<LoadBalancerProbe name="discovery.probe" protocol="http" path="/HealthMonitoring" port="80" intervalInSeconds="8" timeoutInSeconds="16" />
</LoadBalancerProbes>
<WebRole name="Discovery.UI" vmsize="ExtraSmall" enableNativeCodeExecution="false">
<Startup>
<Task commandLine="startup\CreateCustomEventSource.cmd" executionContext="elevated" taskType="simple" />
</Startup>
<Sites>
<Site name="main">
<Bindings>
<Binding name="https.root" endpointName="https" hostHeader="testingblah.com" />
</Site>
<Site name="api" physicalDirectory="..\..\..\catalog\Catalog.Search.API">
<Bindings>
<Binding name="https.root" endpointName="https" hostHeader="api.testingblah.com" />
</Bindings>
</Site>
</Sites>
<Endpoints>
<InputEndpoint name="http" protocol="http" port="80" loadBalancerProbe="discovery.probe" />
<InputEndpoint name="https" protocol="https" port="443" certificate="bibliothecatest.com" />
</Endpoints>
<Imports>
<Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" />
<Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
<Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" />
</Imports>
<Certificates>
<Certificate name="testingblah.com" storeLocation="LocalMachine" storeName="CA" />
</Certificates>
</WebRole>
The key points are the Sites "main" and "api". I've not included the physical directory because, as expected, when they are put in and point to the project files in the solution, the "api" site is not packaged correctly as the Visual Studio package process will only package the first site (i.e. "api" has all the un-transformed .config files and .cs files in it's packaged folder whereas "main" does not - it is correctly packaged, but this is a known issue so I'm not going to complain too much about this.
So to workaround it, for my build server I want to introduce a CSPACK step to do this properly. I pre-build the "main" and "api" web sites using MSDEPLOY to a temporary location, and then use CSPACK to create the package file.
This fails every time with "CloudService077: Need to specify the physical directory for the virtual path 'main/ of role "Discovery.UI". However, I am including the /sitePhysicalDirectories value in CSPACK, i.e.
cspack %root%\ServiceDefinition.csdef ^
/role:Discovery.UI;%compiled%\discovery\Discovery.UI\ ^
/sitePhysicalDirectories:Discovery.UI;main;%compiled%\discovery\Discovery.UI\ ^
/sitePhysicalDirectories:Discovery.UI;api;%compiled%\catalog\Catalog.Search.Api\ ^
/rolePropertiesFile:Discovery.UI;Properties.txt ^
/out:%output% /copyOnly
If I put the sitePhysicalDirectories attribute back into the ServiceDefinition file, and point it to the project directory location in Visual Studio (e.g.)
<Site name="main" physicalDirectory="..\..\..\discovery\Discovery.UI">
then CSPACK fails with CloudServices079: Cannot find the physical directory "nnn" for virtual path main/
This is despite the fact that the CSPACK command line /sitePhysicalDirectories are correct. What's happening is that CSPACK is taking the ServiceDefinition values, applying the relative path values and pointing to completely the wrong place.
If I update ServiceDefinition to use the same physical location (e.g. C:\....\nnnn as opposed to "......\nnnn" that I'm passing in the CSPACK command line, everything works !
So it seems that CSPACK ignores parameters and cannot override values, which isn't what I really need. Is this correct or should I be passing something else to CSPACK?
Azure SDK 2.3

Answer 1

I know this is long after the fact, but I also had endless trouble with CSPACK. It is basically impossible to find any useful information on it.
What I've found, is that if you don't provide the arguments properly, you get all sorts of "Cannot find the physical directory..." and "Need to specify the physical directory..." errors, sometimes with directories that you did not provide.
Thanks to this powershell script I was able to execute it using the correct format and learned these things:
1. You must specify the /role: argument. The /sites argument is an extension of the role you specify here.
2. Put all your sites in one /sites argument or in one /sitePhysicalDirectories argument. I use the /sites argument for my builds.
For the above example, I would try:
cspack %root%\ServiceDefinition.csdef
/role:Discovery.UI;%compiled%\discovery\Discovery.UI\ /sites:Discovery.UI;main;%compiled%\discovery\Discovery.UI\;api;%compiled%\catalog\Catalog.Search.Api\ /rolePropertiesFile:Discovery.UI;Properties.txt
/out:%output% /copyOnly