I have been pulling my hair for the past couple days trying to figure out how set up a CI/CD process just to build a simple WPF solution and create the MSI setup file ("artifact") using Azure DevOps Pipelines. I have tried using Build VS Installer to accomplish this. My main problem is that I don't know exactly what am I doing wrong or what steps I am missing and I can't find clear instructions on this anywhere.
Here's what I've tried:
Using the Hosted 2017 agent pool and the basic .NET Desktop Template. Problems:
Create .msi file(s) from VS Installer project(s) as last task or before publishing artifact):
2018-11-28T22:57:56.3186071Z DEBUG: Aggregated: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.com
2018-11-28T22:57:56.3211382Z Now running (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.com) with Arguments ("D:\a\1\s" /Build "release|any cpu" /Out "D:\a\1\b\BuildInstaller_Log_20181128225756.txt")
2018-11-28T22:58:54.0015320Z Done running DevEnv process. Success = True.
2018-11-28T22:58:54.1169279Z ##[warning]No .MSI files were found, please check your build-configuration. If this is expected, you might consider to use the default Visual Studio Build task instead of this custom Installer task.
2018-11-28T22:58:54.1434410Z ##[section]Finishing: Create .msi file(s) from VS Installer project(s).
Creating my own build agent as outlined in the documentation. I have Visual Studio Community 2017 with the VS Installer Projects extension installed on that server. I followed the steps from this related answer. Results:
2018-11-29T17:46:03.9813075Z DEBUG: Aggregated: System.Object[]\devenv.com
2018-11-29T17:46:04.4346060Z ##[error]Cannot retrieve the dynamic parameters for the cmdlet. The specified wildcard character pattern is not valid: System.Object[]
2018-11-29T17:46:04.4716416Z ##[section]Finishing: Create .msi file(s) from VS Installer project(s).
I also tried DevEnv Build from the market place instead of the DutchWorkz one and still couldn't get an .msi file. Can someone please show me some clear steps on how to achieve this simple goal?
I was able to figure out why I was getting the specific error message below and wanted to share in case it helps anyone out in the future.
DEBUG:
Aggregated: System.Object[]\devenv.com
[error]Cannot retrieve the dynamic parameters for the cmdlet. The specified wildcard character pattern is not valid: System.Object[]
The issue was that I had two versions (Professional and Enterprise) of Visual Studio 2017 installed on my private build server. Once I removed one of them, everything worked great. Not sure if there's a way to get it working with both installed, but I didn't need both.
Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects extension is present in windows-latest runner. Find more here
In short, use an agent with windows-latest vmimage and build via devenv.exe instead of MSBuild.
Related
I've a solution with three projects in it: 2 C# WPF projects and 1 WIX project to create an installer. I've set up a build pipeline on Azure DevOps that references our own build server so I have access to the OS.
I want the Wix installer project to be dependant on the two C# projects for my local test builds but for the Azure Pipeline, I need to build the C# projects first and sign the executables before creating the MSI installer with the WIX project (that needs to be signed, too).
The problem is that the build server ignores "/p:BuildProjectReferences=false" (which should force msbuild to NOT build the dependencies) while my local computer does not when I run the exact same command line on both:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\msbuild.exe" Solution.sln /p:AppxBundle=Always /p:UapAppxPackageBuildMode=StoreUpload /p:RunWixToolsOutOfProc=true /p:BuildProjectReferences=false /target:Installer /m:4 /p:Platform="x64" /p:Configuration="Release"
Extra info
I tried with and without Rebuild option (/target:Installer:Rebuild)
The build server fetches the git repository so it's exactly the same project on both sides.
Both Visual Studio installations are VS 2019 build version 16.11.14
Both Wix Toolset installations are version v3.11.2.4516
Any ideas how to get the build server to not build the dependencies?
Well this is embarrassing. Apparently I had some change on my local computer that wasn't committed yet. So code on both platforms wasn't the same...
The fix was a change in the *.sln file
Project("{930C7802-8A8C-48F9-8165-68863BCCD9DD}") = "Installer", "Installer\Installer.wixproj", "{A9EDFE69-D273-42EE-97EA-469C3434AEDC}"
ProjectSection(ProjectDependencies) = postProject
{C784B33D-1E8D-41EF-97C2-983CA9A5B693} = {C784B33D-1E8D-41EF-97C2-983CA9A5B693}
{B6E37FA9-64CF-491B-B268-9D115AABC6B2} = {B6E37FA9-64CF-491B-B268-9D115AABC6B2}
EndProjectSection
EndProject
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "WPFProject1", "WPFProject1\WPFProject1.csproj", "{C784B33D-1E8D-41EF-97C2-983CA9A5B693}"
EndProject
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "WPFProject2", "WPFProject2\WPFProject2.csproj", "{B6E37FA9-64CF-491B-B268-9D115AABC6B2}"
EndProject
I removed the 'ProjectSection' in the first project (Installer). This resulted in the code being built completely in Visual Studio but not for the Azure Pipelines because of the use of the /p:BuildProjectReferences=false param in the pipeline build command.
The two WPF projects still exist as depedencies in Installer project.
I hope this helps someone someday (or myself in a future project)
I am developing simple Asp.net MVC 5 app which is working ok and visual studio 2015 can build it without any issues, but when i use MSBuild.exe command line tool it shows alot of errors which relates to typescript files compilation (primarily from node_modules folder).
I am trying to use Jenkins CI tool to automate my deployment routine, in order to do so i have to build my app using MSBuild.exe.
My project has tsconfing.json file in the root folder which contains following lines to exclude node_modules folder (it is inside #AngularComponents folder):
"exclude": [ "Scripts/**", "WrittenScripts/#AngularComponents/**" ]
But somehow MSBuild.exe command line tool just ignores it during build.
Does anyone have any ideas how to configure it to take into account my tsconfig? or tell MsBuild to not to build my node_modules folder?
Thank you in advance!
I finally figured it out.
First of all i have to use this MsBuild:
1) C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\msbuild.exe;
Secondly, for some reason msbuild messed up my tools version 4.0 so I need to pass additional parameter to msbuild:
2) /tv:14.0
Thirdly, my typescript files have some /// references to node_modules\#types folder and for some reason it shows me any errors but not related to the reference one.
3) so i have to run npm install to recover #types packages.
After these steps msBuild builds successfully without any errors.
Thanks for all!
I am building a webservice project on a TFS2017 Update 3 with build tools 2017. I get the following error
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual
Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Microsoft.CSharp.CurrentVersion.targets(322,5):
Error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft
Visual
Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Roslyn\Microsoft.CSharp.Core.targets"
was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is
correct, and that the file exists on disk.
What steps do I need to take to fix this error?
In my case, opening the existing Solution file (with .sln extension), it installed all the missing dependencies.
Otherwise check for missing target packages at nuget.org manually and install them (e.g. MSBuild.Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.targets).
As per this GitHub issue, you'll need to set $(RoslynTargetsPath).
If MSBuild is installed on the machine and your tests run in a Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt, then you shouldn't need to do anything. However, MSBuild 15.0 no longer places itself in the registry which makes it impossible for MSBuild to find itself. This is because of a mandate by Visual Studio where you can have multiple side-by-side installations. MSBuild in this case would be installed once per Visual Studio instance. MSBuild now finds itself by looking at environment variables set by the VS command prompt.
If you want to fully redistribute MSBuild via a combination of our packages and all of the other packages needed to do full project evaluation, you will have to set RoslynTargetsPath before you load projects. You could argue this is an issue with NuGet since all packages' <contentFiles /> go to the the root of your output directory and you can't specify a subdirectory for certain packages.
If you're coming to this page from google/duckduckgo after trying to figure out why you're getting a similar message in Ubuntu 20.04, maybe this can help: https://askubuntu.com/a/1231973/1073658 (tl;dr apt install mono-roslyn from mono-project's repo)
First suggest you directly use msbuild command on the build agent with TFS build service account. This will narrow down if the issue is related to your agent environment or your TFS build definition.
According to your error info, the path C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Roslyn\Microsoft.CSharp.Core.targets is looking the path of Visual Studio 2017.
However, for Build Tools the path is different should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\Roslyn
Seems you haven't installed VS2017 on your build agent. This maybe the root cause of the issue.
The simplest solution is installing VS2017 on your build agent. Note, you need to reconfigure the build agent or restart build agent service to capture those new capabilities. Otherwise you need to change the corresponding import section in your .csproj project files.
I updated to TFS2018 and the problem got solved.
I have a VS2013 project for a Windows 8.1 Store App written in C#/XAML. I've configured a build using a TFS 2013 build template to build the solution for my project. There are a few other projects in the solution that are building fine (database project, web project, windows service project, WPF client app project).
When the Windows Store App builds I get the following error:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v12.0\AppxPackage\Microsoft.AppXPackage.Targets (1224): The "GenerateAppxPackageRecipe" task failed unexpectedly.
System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: source
at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToDictionaryTSource,TKey,TElement
at Microsoft.Build.AppxPackage.DumpResourceIndexMap..ctor(ITaskItem[] indexedPayloadFiles)
at Microsoft.Build.AppxPackage.ResourceIndexMap.Create(String projectDir, String makePriExtensionPath, ITaskItem[] indexedPayloadFiles)
at Microsoft.Build.AppxPackage.GenerateAppxPackageRecipe.ExecuteImplementation()
at Microsoft.Build.AppxPackage.AppxPackagingTaskHelper.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.AppxPackage.GenerateAppxPackageRecipe.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskExecutionHost.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITaskExecutionHost.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskBuilder.<ExecuteInstantiatedTask>d__20.MoveNext()
I'm passing the following parameters to the MSBuild Arguments in the build configuration: /p:VisualStudioVersion=12.0 /tv:12.0. Also in the Package.appxmanifest settings under the "Packaging" tab I've set the Generate app bundle setting to Never. I'm not sure what other settings may be relevant here so please let me know if there are other details I can provide that would help you understand my situation better.
The project builds and packages fine on my development system. If I run the Project --> Store --> Create App Packages... wizard from within VS2013 it generates the .appx file.
I really don't know where to look next. Thanks for any help you can provide!
Steve
I took a fresh look at the problem today and have managed to end up with a functional build. The problem seems to be with our customized build template from TFS 2012. It turns out the Xaml activity for running MSBuild in TFS 2012 is named MSBuild and for TFS 2013 it is named RunMSBuild. The 2012 flavor of the activity explicitly runs the MSBuild.exe from the .NET Framework 4.0 installation typically found here: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319. The 2013 flavor of the activity runs the MSBuild.exe from the TFS 2013 installation of MSBuild typically found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin. In order to build Windows Store Apps for Win8.1 you must use MSBuild for 2013.
Our customized build template provided us with automatic assembly versioning in the scheme we prefer which is why I was using that template. It seems I will have to use the new TFS 2013 template (TfvcTemplate.12.xaml) as a basis for our updated custom template from here.
Hope this information might be useful to someone someday. Thanks!
I have created a web solution in visual studio 2010 ,i have also created a setup project in the same solution,I have linked the two solutions by adding project output as content files.
imagine my solution name is example.sln and i have setup name as setup10
I need to build it thru command prompt.
I found in the net that i need to check the build option in configuration manager of the solution i did that.
I then used this command
msbuild example.sln
it started to create setp10.vdproj
then it failed telling that setup10.vdproj doesn't exist.
I am not able to solve this problem from a day.
kindly help me with this.
vdproj files are not supported directly by msbuild You'll have to build then by calling devenv.exe
You can add a build step to msbuild to build the vdproj with devenv. See http://thepursuitofalife.com/how-to-build-vdproj-files-in-msbuild/ for more details.