CruiseControl.NET with a web deployment project

Question

Hey guys, we're currently using a web deployment project to compile the projects in our solution and deploy our website. We'd like to move to using CruiseControl .NET to give us the abilities to automate the builds, add testing, and initiate/review them from a website interface. Currently the web deployment project has project references to all of the projects (70+) and then has a remote DeployPath. This ends up running aspnet_compile and aspnet_merge and dropping the files (assemblies + markup) on our remote server.

I'd like to simulate this behavior with CC but I can't figure out how to do it. I've tried using the wdproj as a target of msbuild (in hopes that it would just build and work) but that seems to fail. I have a hunch I'm going to need a NAnt task or something of the sort to perform the compile/merge steps.

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

Answer 1

As far as I know it is not possible to build the standard wdproj deployment projects with msbuild. For a standard deployment project I think you'll need Visual Studio installed.

So I see these options:

1) Visual Studio on build server: Install Visual Studio on the build server, and then execute the build with Visual Studio (devenv.exe).

2) WIX: If you need a web deployment project, and you will not install Visual Studio on the build server, try making a deployment project with Windows Installer XML instead: http://wix.sourceforge.net.

3) Copy website with msbuild: Skip the web deployment project, and use msbuild to either output the website stuff directly on the test server, or to put in a temporary folder which you can then make into a package with the NAnt zip task:

<exec program="msbuild" commandline="MySolution.sln" />
<exec program="msbuild"
  commandline="MyWebsite\MyWebsite.csproj /t:ResolveReferences;_CopyWebApplication /p:WebProjectOutputDir=\\MyServer\MyWebsite;OutDir=\\MyServer\MyWebsite\" />

The example assumes that you have a web application project in Visual Studio. If you instead have a website project in Visual Studio, the exact steps will be different, but still possible along the same lines.

Answer 2

I ended up using msbuild to run AspNetCompile and AspNetMerge. By just pointing to the correct web folder it found the appropriate dependencies. Thanks for the help guys!