I have an existing Umbraco-project running on an IIS-server. When I started the project I basically installed Umbraco directly to the server and coded through the Admin-interface until the site was launched and went live.
Now, the customer wants some changes and it feels like I've painted myself into a corner here, since I obviously can't make changes in the code while the site is running. So, my question, which I hope this excellent community can help me out with:
How do I proceed when I get a copy of the project locally, to develop in Visual Studio and then publish it back to the live server? Should I create a GIT-repo, or is WebDeploy an option? Which workflow is the most convenient when developing and maintaining an Umbraco site?
I am also quite insecure about what configurations are needed on the IIS-server to support deployment from my local machine, so some input about that would be much appreciated!
Don't tell anyone, but for file updates only (like stylesheets or templates), I sometimes just FTP them up or publish to file system and copy/paste the files via RDP. If you make changes to document types etc., consider if you can't just test them locally and recreate the changes in the live environment afterwards.
Of course, this is only viable for small changes/solutions and one-man teams, but I feel that it's perfectly okay since the alternative(s) get very complex very quickly.
Edit: and also it requires you to keep your local copy pretty close to the live one, so you can be relatively sure stuff doesn't break when you "publish".
You'll have to get a copy of the files from the server, but also use a local copy of the database and update the connection string in web.config to point to that, otherwise any backoffice changes you make will be made on the live server.
If you are just making changes to views then some kind of publish from visual studio will probably work, but if you are making new document types, macros etc., this also involves data changes in the database which won't be published from visual studio at the same time.
There are various tools out there which cater for this situation of making development changes and moving them to live.
The obvious one is that you repeat all the changes you made in dev on the live server, although this can become tedious if there are lots of changes.
There are also things like Umbraco Courier and another one which I can't remember the name of for the life of me that copy all the relevant things from dev to live in one go.
Related
I'm trying to get one of our internal c# click once applications into VSOnline for source control to allow access for an external developer.
I think I've got it set up and working in the Source Control Editor, but am having trouble working through how to actually use the setup day to day.
I've got some git experience but zero TFS experience, but went with the TFS option as I thought it's more likely developers are familiar with it than git.
What I'm trying to achieve is 3 branches; Main/Trunk, Dev and Release and be able to deploy at least Release and Main. Release is for external clients, Main for internal clients.
At the moment my Source Control Explorer looks like;
DefaultCollection
-->Name of project
---->(Branch icon) Dev (created as a Branch from Main)
---->(Branch icon) Main
---->(Branch icon) Release (created as a Branch from Main)
2 things;
In terms of use I'm not really sure how to swap between the branches for coding / making changes? Do I just open the solution file for the branch I want to work on then save all changes as I go, then commit that as a changeset? Or is it a matter of manually checking the file out, working on it, then checking it back in again?
Given it's a ClickOnce app; each branch is deployed to a different IIS site, meaning diff app identies, paths and settings. Am I right in using branches for this or is there a better way? I'm worried about someone committing the wrong file and causing a mandatory uninstall/reinstall of the app.
Any pointers / docco greatly appreciated; just note I'm using VS2010.
Thanks,
Liam
How do I swap between branches
If you're used to GIT than the 'heavy weight' branching in TFVC can be a bit confusing. There is no real "Switching between branches" as you've encountered. You map a branch to a local folder and by opening the files there you're "working on that branch".
As Lee points out you can create separate workspaces for each branch, which will isolate the work areas for each. If you're using a Local Workspace, each workspace gets its own "/tf$" folder, the TFVC equivalent of the "/.git" folder.
There's a couple of documents on MSDN that explain this in a little more detail:
Set up TFVC
Create one or more workspaces
Optimize your workspaces
How do I check in
A changeset in TFVC is the equivalent of a commit in Git, it's a logical set of changed files that is committed/pushed as a whole, or not at all. But just as in Git, you can commit all the changes to your local work area at once, or you can exclude certain changes from the first commit and stick those in a second.
In TFVC you'd normally try to commit a logical set of files that fixed the bug, achieved some goal etc. Though it's still possible to check-out/check-in files individually, chances are much higher that you'll actually cause the sources in the main repository to be in an inconsistent state that way.
See
What is a Changeset
Check in your work
Shelving your work
As for your second question
Depending on how far you'd want to go, you could setup Team Build to actually build the application and to take the configuration from a specific location during the build process. That way you wouldn't have to store the configuration for your production environment with the development settings. Configuration files can contain sensitive information, you might not want to have them in Source Control, except for the development versions.
You can also store the config files in a special folder in each branch and make sure that each time you merge them, they're updated accordingly.
And you can, as Lee mentions, look into Config Transaformations. which apply some XSLT to your config file in the build process. That way you can have multiple config files stored in each branch and the selection of your "Configuration" in Visual Studio will define what the final config looks like.
See:
Tricks with app.config files and click once
The _PublishedApplication Nuget package
SlowCheetah
In terms of use I'm not really sure how to swap between the branches for coding / making changes?
I recommend creating separate workspaces for each branch. This way you won't accidentally check in release code when you are trying to check in dev code. Also, when you want to switch which branch of code you are working on, you switch your workspace. This should keep things "cleaner" and easier to work with.
Do I just open the solution file for the branch I want to work on then save all changes as I go, then commit that as a changeset? Or is it a matter of manually checking the file out, working on it, then checking it back in again?
You shouldn't have to manually check it out. If I remember correctly, it will default to auto check out when you start to make changes. You can check code in however big of chunks as you want. But make sure if you are checking in changes to ClassA.cs that reference needed changes in ClassB.cs, you check that in as well. You don't want to leave the source code in a broken state for the other developers.
If you start working on something and have to suspend that work to do some other task that rose in importance, shelve your work instead of letting your workspace get cluttered up with half done work that makes it difficult to manage check ins.
Given it's a ClickOnce app; each branch is deployed to a different IIS site, meaning diff app identies, paths and settings. Am I right in using branches for this or is there a better way?
I'd look into using web.config transformations for this. You'll still want multiple branches but to separate tested/completed/developing code from each other.
I have a very odd situation where by changes committed to the repository by my colleagues when updated to my local copy of the software, Visual studio doesn't recognise them immediately, and reload. the result (and this is very odd) is that most of the times, I will save my changes without the reloaded projects and will overwrite my colleagues changes. It is so embarrassing that sometimes I am asked why I had to change a piece of code and in reality I hadn't.
Another thing is, when I check in some VS project level changes like when someone added a new class, or form or anything and continue to work in Visual studio, it will take me at least 5 to 10 minutes before I get the warning that there was some changes and be asked to reload the project etc...
I think there should be a setting somewhere in visual studio to trigger an automatic reload, but can't find it.
This affect me and another person so far but mine is the strangest as it can take up to 30 minutes before a project start reload.
Any Ideas welcome
This is my settings
If you are working using Source Control, you will need to synchronise your local workspace with the server ("get" the latest code) before any changes by your colleagues will be copied to your PC.
If you don't "get" the latest code before you make changes then you may have to merge your changes with somebody else's, which can be a difficult, time consuming or even dangerous process - especially if you use the default Visual Studio automatic merge process, which usually does the wrong thing, resulting in essentially corrupt code (making it look like you deleted your colleague's works, just as you are describing, for example).
The best way to work with source control is the "little and often" approach:
Get the latest source code before you start any new work, so that your PC is as up to date as possible.
It's usually a good practice to "get" the latest code frequently (e.g. I do it first thing every morning) so that any merge conflicts are flagged up and dealt with as early as possible. The longer you wait before merging the worse the merge process tends to get. (Caveat: Check with your build system that the current version of the code on the server is working before you get it - you don't want to get broken code onto your PC as it may stop you being able to work at all).
Arrange your work as many small incremental steps that can be safely checked in as they are completed (rather than working for 3 months on hundreds of files and then dumping it on the system as one massive change )
When you are ready to check in, get the latest code, rebuild, and re-test your changes to be sure they still work when integrated with the latest program code. Only check in if everything works well.
Also be aware that when you try to edit a file, the source control provider may automatically "get" the latest version of that file for you (which could cause Visual Studio to tell you it has reloaded the file, and perhaps explain why you say it sometimes takes a while to "update", as it doesn't happen until you start editing a new file that has been changed recently by someone else). If this is the case, then the truth is that you have not "updated" the entire set of source code, only one file - in this case you really need to get all the latest changes to the source code (if you don't you may find it is uncompilable or (even worse), compiles but exhibits undefined behaviours due to only part of the code being up to date)
Lastly, a very good practice when checking in your code is to go through the list of files you are checking in and diff them one by one against the latest server code to see what you have changed. This may sound laborious but it confers several benefits:
It reminds you what you did, which can sometimes be helpful for filling in the check-in comment to clearly describe all your changes and make sure you don't miss an important note.
You will easily spot anything that has been screwed up in the merge process - there will be chunks of code that appear to be created or deleted that you know you didn't touch. So you'll be able to discover and fix these problems before you check in rather than annoying your colleagues by "deleting" their changes.
I find this very useful for finding temporary debugging code that I have forgotten to take out before I check in.
Sometimes you may even do a double-take on a bit of code you are about to check in and think "huh? why did I do that?". And then you might decide to re-examine and possibly even rewrite the code you thought was good to go.
Final Note: The options you show in your edit only relate to changes that are made to the files on your PC by another program on your PC. If another user makes a change and checks it in to source control, these options will have no effect. It is only when your Source Control system copies those changes to your PC's hard drive that you might see Visual Studio reacting to those changes (depending on how well your source control system is integrated with VS).
If you're sure the problem is Visual Studio (e.g. the file really has changed on the disk but you don't see it in Visual Studio)
Make sure that the Detect when file is changed option is checked.
Tools > Options > Environment > Documents > Detect when file is changed outside the environment
Since you are sometimes getting an alert to reload your project due to external changes means you already have the settings required to detect file changes in Visual Studio.
However, reloading of project/solution will only be triggered if the .csproj (or .vbproj) or .sln file was changed.
By the way, are you using some version control system? It seems that you are just sharing the solution and editing simultaneously.
I have a very large website which was "published" using Visual Studio 2008 to the dev/live server. As a result, there are no *.aspx.cs files on the live server, just "website.dll" - all good so far.
However, because we're constantly having to add pages to the site this now means that if I'm half way through developing a big part of the site when I'm required to make a small change elsewhere, I can't publish "website.dll" to the live site because it has all my half finished code in there. How do people deal with this situation?
If I could split the site up into multiple dlls (perhaps based on namespace?) then I could just publish the small part of the site that's changed, leaving the bit I'm still developing on the dev server.
Thanks,
B
Your problem is not the single assembly, but your way of developing.
To cope with this problem I would introduce a source control system (svn, git, ...) in your environment. These allow you to use branches, you could create 2 branches. One for new development and one for bugfixes or small changes.
These can later be merged to create a new release.
More info can be found here or here and in the manuals of Subversion, Git and other source control systems.
No, you can't.
Split your project in several sub-projects and handle them in a solution. Every project will become a seperate DLL.
Use source control. We use subversion with ahnk+tortoise.
subversion on wikip
This is really weird behavior, let's say I have an asp.net mvc project as follow on my desktop (vista):
/mvcapplication/app1
then over the course of development, I copy this solution to a briefcase on a thumbdrive so I can work on it from a laptop (xp).
When I insert the thumbdrive back on the desktop, I notice it's taking longer and longer to sync, eventually it took so long that it just hangs there. I checked the project structure and found that it is now:
/mvcapplication/app1/app1/app1/app1
with each /app1 containing the entire project structures. I am not new to visual studio, and I am sure I opened and saved the solution and files just as I normally did, but this is just bizzard. I thought this is caused by briefcase, but the same thing happened when I copied the solution into a folder on the thumbdrive.
I would have left this alone, but with that sort of crazy folder structure it's really difficult to determine which folder has my current changes..
Anyone ever run into something like this?
Never had this happen but then I don't use the Briefcase. Then again, I try to avoid most things in Vista.
I just use good 'ol copy and past for thumb drive stuff.
I have a local install and a live install. My live install is working except I changed one of the methods to be restricted via [Authorize(Roles = "Admin, Host")] I want to remove this, but I need to do a build of the solution and move the .dll over for it to work (correct me if I'm wrong).
I cannot build the solution because my local install has changes to all of the files and will not build properly. All I want to do it update that one controller/page to allow access... is there any way of doing that?
What you need is branches (you are using Source Control, aren't you?)
Basically, what you do is have one branch where you do development, and another "stable" branch, where you only do small fixes to the code that is in production.
Once you deploy to production, you "merge" from the dev branch to the stable branch.
If you are not using Source Control, just have 2 copies of the code for now, and do the same kinds of things.
And learn to use Source Control, your life will change dramatically.
THis may not help you this time, but it sounds like a perfect example of what source code control systems are for. Tools like cvs, git, ClearCase, subversion and so on let you maintain a database of code and changes to it. Then when you make a release, or "live install", or deploy to a production server, you can make a snapshot of the code at that point. Then when you need to fix something urgently in the production version without a full release cycle, you can check out a copy of the code that is running "live", and fix it, without messing up the copy you're hacking on for the next great feature.