I am completely new to Azure and PowerShell but have been tasked with setting up a build and deploy solution for several app services.
We currently have a build server (Azure VM) that is running CruiseControl.NET to build and test some C# .NET solutions that should be deployed in Azure.
This build server currently handles the following tasks:
Pulling code from source control when commits happen
Building the projects
Running some unit test cases
Copying output/binaries to an output location
However, as it exists now, developers of each of our app services need to 'Publish' their services manually from their development machines by clicking the button in Visual Studio once they have verified that the build and test cases have passed in the test environment on the server.
As I am hoping for a completely automated solution, I expect I need to use something like PowerShell or the Azure Cross Platform CLI (npm) to do this?
I'm extremely confused with the Azure Service Management vs Azure Resource Management versions with the new Azure Powershell 1.0. All of our services appear to be the newer Resource Management versions, not 'classic'.
The eventual goal is to have the build server do the following
Pulling code from source control when commits happen
Building the projects
Running some unit test cases
Copying output/binaries to an output location
If the build and test cases are successful, update the service in azure to the latest build
I am hoping there is a way to set up these projects, or take the existing binaries that result from the builds, and have them be deployed into Web Apps using the new Azure Resource Management Powershell features.
Any advice or resources for more information about how this can be done?
Hopefully this makes some sense. Please let me know if I am going about this completely the wrong way or direct me to a more correct forum.
Thanks!
have you consider to use Azure App Service? where you can get those build infrastructure for free. e.g https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-publish-source-control/
Once you setup continues deployment, you will get below three when there is push event (if you are using git)
Pulling code from source control when commits happen
Building the projects
Copying output/binaries to an output location
and to "Running some unit test cases", you can create your own batch or powershell script with post deployment hook https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Post-Deployment-Action-Hooks
Related
I did create a single file application with C#. I have this executable located in a repository and I push it as an artifact. The former is used in build pipelines where I simply add the repo so I can use it. The latter is to use it as an artifact for a release pipeline.
Now during a build pipeline I can simply use it, have tested it and it works. Not really important but the application does 2 things, it sends out mails and updates work items.
When using that exact same application in a release pipeline I get the following error:
Failure extracting contents of the application bundle.
I/O failure when writing extracted files.
I don't know for sure, but could this have something to do with the release pipeline's agent running in a containerized environment? The reason I am asking so is because someone else had such an issue while using this approach on AWS with containers, see this Reddit link
[UPDATE]
The release pipeline was running on a self-hosted Azure DevOps agent. The environment where it is installed on has no .NET 5 runtime nor SDK installed. But I expect the single file application to contain the runtime as well, or am I wrong?
I did publish my application as a simple folder publish. Then putting all the files within the publish folder in the Azure DevOps repository.
Next I pushed all those files as an artifact with a build pipeline, had to install the .NET 5 current runtime on the environment as the release pipeline is running on a self-hosted agent, and then I am able to run the application.
How would I go about releasing or deploying (do those mean the same thing?) my WPF application (.Net Framework 4.7.2) through Azure Pipelines?
I'm a little confused on what to use. There's all these terminologies like artifacts, release, publish, staging. I'm not sure what task I need to use.
Let's go over a typical scenario so you best understand the terminology. This, of course, is just an example.
You have multiple git repositories in Azure DevOps Repos. One of those git repositories is a common library which is shared across multiple projects in your company. Another one is the companies flagship application, written in WPF, and used internally by 100 employees. Lastly, there is a web portal for external clients to submit orders. Each of these git repositories has branch policies in place to prevent checking in directly to the master branch (a pull request is required).
Development Team A works on the core functionality of your technology team, they update the common libraries. As part of the build pipeline, the library is compiled and a NuGet package is generated. The pipeline then publishes the package to your private Azure DevOps Artifacts feed, so that the other development teams can use the package.
Development Team B works on the flagship WPF application. As part of the build pipeline, the pipeline compiles the application. It creates a build artifact of the bin directory. Another stage in the pipeline takes uses the artifact and publishes it to the test environment, and sets a flag on the database that the current test version is the version that was just published. When the development team launches the test application, it is automatically updated because the version was incremented in the database.
Development Team C works on the web application. As part of the build pipeline, the pipeline compiles the application. It deploys the web application to the test web server. The test web application is available immediately for the development team to test.
At a later time, when the iteration cycle is completed, there is a code freeze. The code freeze involves the DevOps team manually running the build pipelines. Because the pipelines were manually run, the first pipeline will deploy the WPF application to the staging environment, and the version number is incremented in the database. The second pipeline deploys the web application to a green-blue server.
The development teams do a final round of testing to ensure there are no bugs which cause a stoppage. Once they are good to go, the WPF application is released from the staging environment by having it pushed out to all of the employee desktops. The release process for the web application involves flipping a switch so that the green server (updated web application) goes live, the network switch points to the green server, then the blue server (older web application) goes down.
If any major issues arise, things can be rolled back by flipping the network switch from the green server back to the blue, and deploying the older version of the WPF application to the employee desktops, etc.
This is just an example, it is not the only way to do this of course.
My company has recently switched from automatic migrations on our Entity Framework databases to now relying on a command being run to migrate and afterwards seed the database.
We want this to run on the database of each environment that is being deployed to via Appveyor, so when pushing to a specified branch Appveyor builds, deploys and then runs the migrate and seed command on each environment after the deploy is completed.
We usually place all build and deploy configuration in a yaml file, but there doesn't seem to be any way to run commands after deploy on the environment itself. The yaml script command after_deploy runs command as part of the build process, not the environment.
The Appveyor environment has a setting After deployment command that seems to be the key, but it requires the "runCommand" provider to be allowed on the server side. The reason for this is understandable, but how do I go about setting this up?
The guides I've found haven't really given anything. Nothing applicable on SO, and the link to Microsoft that Appveyor prints as an error in the deploy process is no longer accurate.
Because environment deployments run on shared worker severs, custom scripting is not allowed. But you could try a deployment project approach. This divides your project into a "main project" and "deploymnet project" thus simulating a deployment environment, allowing you to decouple builds and deployments.
Assuming you are deploying to azure, you could then use this script my colleague wrote to run your commands on the server.
If you are not deploying to azure, you could switch to AppVeyor deployment agent which uses web deploy behind the scenes.
I am using Azure Functions backed by a SQL database using the Entity Framework.
To ensure code correctness, I would like to perform full automated component tests on my local machine.
Injecting a connection string which points to a local database solves the SQL server issue, but I am yet to find a way to spin up a local instance of Azure Functions programmatically. As VS exposes this behavior using the “Debug” functionality, it should theoretically possible.
How do I programmatically spin up a local version of Azure Functions using a project which is located in the same solutions as my testing project?
VS uses the Azure Functions Core Tools for running your functions locally.
You can run yourself without needing VS in the picture. By default VS downloads the core tools under C:\Users\<Name>\AppData\Local\Azure.Functions.Cli\<version>\func.exe
You can run func.exe for help, but to launch the same way VS does it, just cd into the output folder of your project (e.g: bin\Debug\net461\) and run func host start
more docs are here: Code and test Azure Functions locally
I'm trying to make the Visual Studio Online build service run my nSpec tests. I've downloaded the nSpec test adapter (which works fine locally), unzipped the DLLs and uploaded those to a separate TFS repository. I've configured the hosted build controller and set the reference to this repo.
As far as I know this should be sufficient, but my build simply doesn't find any unit tests. If I try to edit the build definition -> Click Process, it downloads custom assemblies it looks like, but it just writes this message to the console:
No assemblies were found in the custom assembly path. The assemblies may not exist or you may not have permissions to read them. Contact your Team Foundation Administrator for more information.
I've tried the same procedure with mSpec as well, but exactly the same happens here. nUnit seems to work though, but if I'm not entirely wrong, that might actually be installed already on hosted build server.
Unfortunately this requires the nSpec plugin to be installed on the build server and the TFS Hosted Build servers and you can only use the plugins provided. I believe that the servers only currently support MSTest, nUnit, and xUnit.
To get this working you will need to create your own custom build server. You can install a build server on Azure and install the tools you need. Then you can run your own build configuration there.