I have an MVC4 web application that uses jquery and some other libs (jquery-ui in particular).
Yesterday I decided to update all the packages via NuGet package manager; my web application worked correctly on my local machine, but when I deployed it to my azure website a javascript error popped out in my browser (it was related to jquery-ui library, something like "$browser is not a function").
I searched the web and found out that the cause of this error was that I was still using an old version of jquery. It seems that deploy process didn't publish the new version of the js libraries even if they have been updated in local project.
I solved the problem connecting via RDP to the Azure machine, deleting the contents of "Scripts" folder and deploying again, but I'm wondering if there's a way to "force" script/libraries update when deploying to Azure.
Edit 1: I'm developing with Visual Studio 2012, using Mercurial as source control provider
Edit 2: I'm deploying to Azure Web Sites
Please, in your future questions clearly indicate what type of Azure Service do you use. An MVC4 web application can be deployed to 3 different type of services: Azure Web Sites, Azure Cloud Service, Azure Virtual Machine!
Since you are talking about RDP, the viable options are Cloud Service or Virtual Machine. But then you say
I solved the problem connecting via RDP to the Azure machine, deleting
the contents of "Scripts" folder and deploying again, but I'm
wondering if there's a way to "force" script/libraries update when
deploying to Azure.
Now the question is how you do deploy to Windows Azure? Is it via Visual Studio's Publish feature to Azure Cloud Service. Is it Visual Studio's Package feature and then using any other method of deployment (upload the package from the portal, use Azure PowerShell cmdlets, or use third party tool to deploy the package)? Is it integration with Mercurial and deployment is done automatically when you check-in?
Any any case, the issue you face is a mixture of NuGET failing to do real clean update of everything. Browser caching - especially for local development - IE caches all the scripts, CSS and images and it is hard to say (without explicitly deleting all locally cached files) which script are you actually using. Simple version control issue - keeping old and new scripts.
When you do a JS/CSS updates I strongly advise all the customers to first delete all browser's cache (crtl+shift+del - works for all browsers) before testing locally.
I highly doubt that if you use a Cloud Service, RDP-ing and deleting anything in the sitesroot folder will help you when you redeploy. What you do in the ROLEROOT drive (usually E:, sometimes F: drive) is dropped of/forgotten when you re-deploy regardless of the re-deploy method you use: in-place-upgrade or full re-deploy. So what you did is actually creating new package and re-deploying your new package.
The fact that you deleted some folder has no effect on your re-deploy action.
Related
I'll preface this with the fact that I'm very new to Visual Studio, so I am prepared to hear that my problem lies in something I haven't read yet.
I have a database first project in Visual Studio 2015 v.3 that I am attempting to publish to an existing Azure account and resource group.
I have successfully converted it to an Azure project via the menu options: Build > Publish to Microsoft Azure.
I can successfully build both the local and the Azure projects without error, but whenever I attempt to edit the Roles in the Azure project to add the Azure connection string as per the tutorial found here, the program hangs up irretrievably. This makes my twelfth attempt to edit the Roles.
It took Visual Studio five tries to publish to Microsoft Azure using the menu options above.
To fix this, I have tried all of the following:
Restarting my computer
Restarting my Azure connection
Restarting Visual Studio
Confirming Visual Studio's connection to the Azure account I want to publish to
Checking to be sure my Azure SDK (version 2.9.1) and Visual Studio (version 3) installations are the most recent versions and that the installation appears to be clean
Removing the Azure portion of the project, cleaning and rebuilding the local solution, and reattempting to publish to Azure
Cleaning and building both solutions before attempting to edit the Roles for the Azure portion of the solution
Confirming that the resource group I am attempting to publish to does exist at the specified connection string and contains the necessary resources (in this case, a server and an SQL database)
I am attempting to connect (for now) with HTTP and not HTTPS, as per other similar questions about Visual Studio 2015 freezing while publishing to Azure
Confirming that I am able to connect remotely to Azure via Visual Studio (this is probably a gimmie, but it doesn't hurt to be specific)
I also notice that when I attempt to browse the Azure features on the menu to the left of the Visual Studio window, Visual Studio freezes (particularly if I click on the links for Data Factory, Mobile Services, Service Bus, and Virtual Machine).
Server Explorer is showing that I am logged in to Azure with the account I'm attempting to publish to.
I can reach, read, and edit the local database files. I can also run the local project without error.
The application was configured to use an IIS Web Server and uses SQL Express. It froze repeatedly while attempting to change configurations from the IIS Express and LocalDB default to IIS Web and SQL Express.
I do have the application backed up locally as well as via a private GitHub repo just in case I manage to bork it permanently trying to do this.
I would very much appreciate the help.
edited to add: I'm currently running Windows 10.
edited again to add: The task manager shows the load to memory and CPU during the period when Visual Studio is frozen to be less than 15%, the majority of which is not Visual Studio. It shouldn't be a hardware issue, but I did try closing the majority of the background services that were non-essential just in case there was some sort of conflict occurring.
Making this an answer instead of a comment because while it may be a silly oversight, there's bound to be someone who would benefit from the answer.
The problem was that I was working from a local copy of a remote database. When it came time to push up to the remote, I deleted the local copy and data interface model, and reconstituted the model on the remote database, creating several connection strings in Web.config.
When I attempted from there to publish, Visual Studio read the connection strings in the Web.config for the project and attempted to hunt down the local and over-write the remote database.
Removing all other connection strings from the Web.config for the project removed many of the problems with freezing and hanging that I was experiencing (and made the project run faster by resolving the search for associated project resources.)
Lesson learned: make sure you clean your Web.config file before attempting to push to remote.
We have a web app and a desktop windows WPF app.
Windows app sends data to webapp (hosted on azure)
Users download app from website. There are occasionally new versions of desktop apps available.
What is the most efficient way to setup automatic updates for desktop app? We are using github.
I found "releases" in github but I'm not sure how to notify desktop app and how to create an updater. (I guess we need to check for github releases every time app is started. Do I need to use Github api for this?)
What is the best repository structure for releases?
I'm looking for best practicies on how to perform seamless updates to desktop apps. (In terms of repository setup, creating web api to pull version info maybe?)
You can deploy your desktop applications using ClickOnce Deployment mechanism. This will take care of updating the software. Your users download the software from a publicly accessible Internet site. Whenever you have a new version available, you can simply deploy the latest deployment files on the download link. ClickOnce deployed application automatically check for any updated version on that link and prompt the user to download and install the latest version.
From the same MSDN link, one of the problems solved by ClickOnce deployment is facilitating automated updates:
Difficulties in updating applications. With Microsoft Windows
Installer deployment, whenever an application is updated, the user
must reinstall the whole application; with ClickOnce deployment, you
can provide updates automatically. Only those parts of the application
that have changed are downloaded, and then the full, updated
application is reinstalled from a new side-by-side folder.
I was looking into accomplishing the same needs and came across this library which can do what you're asking for;
https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows
There's a lot of configuration, but what you're asking for is not trivial, but maybe you can get some ideas.
For our needs; we're going have our build server (teamcity) create an MSI using a Wix project then the app will download and execute the MSI. Once we go to production we'll move MSI hosting over to some more enterprise-y CDN type setup.
Problem
Getting a deployment error when trying to publish to an Azure Web App from TFS CI. A file is locked and this prevents the build from updating.
Symptoms
Publishing manually (Web Deploy publish from within Visual Studio) usually succeeds.
Stopping the Web App and publishing allows it to succeed, however this defeats the point of our CI if we need need to stop and start the Web App each time.
CI publish to Web roles and Worker roles don't appear to have this issue, we only get it on publishing to Web Apps (formerly Web Sites, the current Azure Portal term is now App Service).
Only publishing from a CI build via TFS fails consistently in this way.
Error
Web deployment task failed. (Web Deploy cannot modify the file
'msvcr100.dll' on the destination because it is locked by an external
process. In order to allow the publish operation to succeed, you may
need to either restart your application to release the lock, or use
the AppOffline rule handler for .Net applications on your next publish
attempt. Learn more at:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=221672#ERROR_FILE_IN_USE.)
The information at the link isn't very helpful.
ERROR_FILE_IN_USE
Diagnosis – A destination file cannot be overwritten or deleted because it is currently in use.
Resolution – Make sure that the destination file is not in use before performing a sync. If you are syncing content to a web site
hosted on IIS 7 or later (using the appHostConfig, iisApp, or
contentPath providers), consider taking the application offline during
the sync by enabling the appOffline rule.
Attempted resolutions
We were using New Relic - have since removed New Relic and this issue still persists. The binary appears to be a Microsoft library but it's unclear how it is relevant to the application (it's not referenced).
Some other SO questions have addressed similar issues with publishing but none of these relate to getting this issue from TFS CI.
azurew website continious deployment - Web Deploy cannot modify the file 'XXX' on the destination because it is locked by an external process
How to take web app offline while publishing?
One answer in the above question suggests using the EnableMSDeployAppOffline configuration in the publish profile, and adding this configuration works OK for doing a publishing manually from within VS but it doesn't fix the problem when publishing automatically from TFS/CI.
Edit
How to take web app offline while publishing? deals with taking the app offline using the EnableMSDeployAppOffline configuration - unfortunately this config only seems to be supported when doing WebDeploy through Visual Studio (not CI).
You can use the Web Deploy v3 in CI to deploy your web app.
In Web Deploy V3, we added support to automatically take an ASP.Net
application offline before publishing to it. This is useful if a user
wants to ensure that their application does not have a lock on a file
(e.g. SQL CE sdf files which only allow one connection to the file at
a time) being overwritten, or if they want to ensure that visitors to
their site cannot affect the publish process. When the publish process
is completed, the App_Offline.htm file will be removed and the site
will be online again.
Or you can add a PowerShell script like following to deploy the web app to Azure:
param($websiteName, $packOutput)
$website = Get-AzureWebsite -Name $websiteName
# get the scm url to use with MSDeploy. By default this will be the second in the array
$msdeployurl = $website.EnabledHostNames[1]
$publishProperties = #{'WebPublishMethod'='MSDeploy';
'MSDeployServiceUrl'=$msdeployurl;
'DeployIisAppPath'=$website.Name;
'Username'=$website.PublishingUsername;
'Password'=$website.PublishingPassword}
Write-Output "Stopping web app..."
Stop-AzureWebsite -Name $websiteName
Write-Output "Publishing web app..."
$publishScript = "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\Publish\Scripts\default-publish.ps1"
. $publishScript -publishProperties $publishProperties -packOutput $packOutput
Write-Output "Starting web app..."
Start-AzureWebsite -Name $websiteName
Reference from: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Library/vs/alm/Build/azure/deploy-aspnet5
The new "Deploy AzureRM Web App" task has an option to take the app offline which will prevent this error.
See screenshot for checkbox
I am developing a C#, MVC4, EF5 Code First application on .NET in Visual Studio 2012 and have used the VS publish mechanism to deploy it to an Azure Website with an Azure SQL Database.
I now want to use Git and GitHub for version control and involve others in the project.
However, although I am familiar with using Git in a LAMP environment, I have no experience of using Git with Windows, Azure Websites and a compiled environment.
I would like to use the Azure Website as the production server, another Azure Website as a Staging server, developer Windows machines using Visual Studio for development and GitHub as the central repository.
There is a helpful article here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/publishing-with-git/ . I can get my head around what would be needed here for, say, a PHP application on Azure. But I am unsure of the best approach with a compiled application and what I can achieve using Azure Websites and Visual Studio.
A nudge or two in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!
don't publish from VS to azure, instead setup your azure website to pull from the github repo. the deployment process compiles your solution.
watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NGieL0tinw&feature=youtu.be&hd=1 or read http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2012/09/continuous-deployment-from-github-to.html
Also SocttGu announced this on his blog # http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/09/17/announcing-great-improvements-to-windows-azure-web-sites.aspx he also talks about a cool feature of publishing branches, this will nail your requirement for a stage server and production server. Have a stage branch and a production branch and merge to them as desired. see the section "Support for multiple branches"
looks like they added support for private repos finally.
appharbor is a competitor to azure that does something similar.
You are basically introducing a new step with the requirement that the source code must be compiled before it can be deployed to the server. Where you implement this step is up to you. You could:
Ensure that your target server has the capabilities to compile the source code (some Continuous Integration tools could help with this, such as CruiseControl.NET). This has the caveat that the target server be able to compile source code (possibly even requiring Visual Studio to be installed), so that may not be an option.
Check the compiled binaries into source control. You could keep these compiled binaries separate from the main source branch, to keep things clean. Deploy the binaries to the target server.
Some hybrid of the previous two options is also possible; you could set up a Continuous Integration server with CruiseControl.NET, which can check out the current source, build it, and check the resulting binary back into a special branch, then deploy that branch to your target Server.
I am working on VS 2010 with .net 4 (OS: Windows XP). I want my application to have update feature. I have only one computer. How can i deploy the application it to test the update feature?
Currently i am publishing my application in a folder in my documents
I tried publishing to local FTP using XAMPP but it was unable to check for updates on FTP.
Now i have installed IIS to make a local HTTP server to deploy my application there but it asks for Front Page Server Extension then was asking Front Page.
All i need is that my application can update it self. Original requirement was patch update but i don't know how to do that. I think using ClickOnce is enough.
Create a network share on your local machine and publish to that; when you install the application, make sure to install it via the network share too.