ClickOnce – Creating Publish Page from msbuild

ClickOnce via msbuild

The Problem

When you publish from Visual Studio, the publish directory gets three files:-

• Publish.htm
• setup.exe
• MyApp.application

but when you publish using msbuild you do not get the Publish.htm.

This post covers one approach to ensure you also get a nice publish.htm file. Actually it’s a two part blog, in the second part I’ll cover how to simplify your deployment process for multiple environments.

As a pre-requisite you’ll need to install msbuild community tasks.

All credit for this post belongs to my good friend Craig Hunter, this is pretty much a slightly modified version of his solution.

Step One – Create Customization File

This step in kind of optional. All subsequent steps may be done within your .csproj, it is just my preference to put all of my customizations into a separate file.

1. In your project file directory, create a new file called Customized.targets (actually call it whatever you want).
2. Now open your .csproj in notepad++, copy the first and last lines and add them to Customized.targets. Should look something like this

<Project DefaultTargets=”Build” xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003&#8243; ToolsVersion=”3.5″>
</Project>

3. At the bottom of your .csproj add these two lines

<Import Project=”Customized.targets” />
<Import Project=”$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBuildCommunityTasks\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets” />

What is not optional is adding the Import of the MSBuild community tasks.

Step Two – Add Publish Template

1. In your project file directory, add a new directory called Publish.
2. Add this file to that directory.

You don’t really need to but I also added the directory to my project. At the very least you do have to add it to source control (otherwise it won’t get to the build machine)

Step Three – Customizations

Add these customizations to your Customized.targets file. Remove the numbers, they are just there for reference below…

1.	<PropertyGroup>
		<BuildEnvironment>DEV</BuildEnvironment>
	</PropertyGroup>

2.	<Choose>
		<When Condition=" '$(BuildEnvironment)' == 'DEV' ">
		  <PropertyGroup>
		    <PublishDir>\\MachineIP\ReleaseDirectory\$(BuildEnvironment)\</PublishDir>
		  </PropertyGroup>
		</When>
		<When Condition=" '$(BuildEnvironment)' == 'QA' ">
		  <PropertyGroup>
		    <PublishDir>\\MachineIP\ReleaseDirectory\$(BuildEnvironment)\</PublishDir>
		  </PropertyGroup>
		</When>	</Choose>

3.	<PropertyGroup>
		<!-- Note this must be done AFTER the above Choose (so PublishDir is set)-->
		<PublishFilePath>$(PublishDir)publish.html</PublishFilePath>
	</PropertyGroup>

4.	<ItemGroup>
		<Tokens Include="PublisherName">
		  <ReplacementValue>$(PublisherName)</ReplacementValue>
		  <Visible>false</Visible>
		</Tokens>
		<Tokens Include="ProductName">
		  <ReplacementValue>$(ProductName)</ReplacementValue>
		  <Visible>false</Visible>
		</Tokens>
		<Tokens Include="ApplicationVersion">
		  <ReplacementValue>$(ApplicationVersion)</ReplacementValue>
		  <Visible>false</Visible>
		</Tokens>
		<Tokens Include="Prerequsites">
		  <ReplacementValue>@(BootstrapperPackage->'&lt;li&gt;%(ProductName)&lt;/li&gt;','%0D%0A')</ReplacementValue>
		  <Visible>false</Visible>
		</Tokens>
		<Tokens Include="Username">
		  <ReplacementValue>$(Username)</ReplacementValue>
		  <Visible>false</Visible>
		</Tokens>
	</ItemGroup> 

5.	<Target Name="AfterPublish">
		<Time Format="dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm">
		  <Output TaskParameter="FormattedTime" PropertyName="PublishTime" />
		</Time>
		<!-- Finalise the publish.htm template file and copy it to the publish location -->
		<TemplateFile Template="Publish\publish.template.html" Tokens="@(Tokens)" OutputFilename="$(PublishFilePath)" />
		<FileUpdate Files="$(PublishFilePath)" Regex="\${PublishTime}" ReplacementText="$(PublishTime)" />
	</Target>

1. More on the BuildEnvironment property in a later posting. It’s not essential just remove all references to it if you want to remove it.

2. Also more on this in a later post, it is for specifying details for multiple environments. In the provided sample the PublishDir is the same machine and parent directory for both DEV and QA with a separating sub directory of the environment name. Don’t forget to SHARE the ReleaseDirectory folder!

3. Tells MSBuild where to put the publish.html file (name it what you want)

4. The publish.template.html has a number of tokens which need to be set.  Adjust these how you want, add or remove whatever tokens you want in the template.

5. After MSBuild finishes publishing it will run this section which creates the publish.html file using the token values.

Save those changes and you are done, you should now be able to run MSBuild, call publish and have a publish.html created for you with relevant information.

Step Four – Run MSBuild

Open Visual Studio command prompt, navigate to your project directory, execute (this assumes you only have one project file in the directory):

msbuild /t:Publish /p:Configuration=Release /p:BuildEnvironment=DEV

Done!

Why Bother?

If you get the file from VS why then care about what happens when publishing directly from msbuild?

I can think of three reasons why you need to publish from msbuild.

First, ideally developers should never publish from their machines.  (I say ideally because I have to raise a guilty hand and confess this is currently what I am doing…sometimes cirumstance forces bad practice upon us). This means ideally you have a build machine and it is from this machine only that releases should be done. So if you want to use VS to do the publish then you need to install and licence that machine.

Secondly, you want to be able to do a release from the command line, you don’t want to muck around starting VS, wait for the solution to load, open properties and click publish, what a waste of time, with msbuild you can create a batch file or two and start the publish process in the time it takes you to navigate to that directory.

Finally, the customization options available to you from within VS is too limiting. For example, if you are using VS to publish to multiple environments, how do you handle changing the parameters for each environment?

Some Notes

You can of course still run publish from VS but I don’t recommend it, get out of that bad habit and start using MSBuild directly. However if you insist on using VS, if you make any changes to Customization.targets, you need to unload and reload your project in VS for those changes to be ‘picked up’ by VS.

Please let me know if you identify any flaws or improvements that may be made with this approach.

<Choose>
<When Condition=” ‘$(BuildEnvironment)’ == ‘DEV’ “>
<PropertyGroup>
<BaseUrlPmsServices>https://ecsport3.cps.com.au/Pms</BaseUrlPmsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEcsServices>https://ecsport3.cps.com.au/Ecs</BaseUrlEcsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEdasServices>https://edasport.cps.com.au:1800/services</BaseUrlEdasServices&gt;
<BaseUrlHelp>http://ecstest.cps.com.au/PmsHelp</BaseUrlHelp&gt;
<PublishDir>\\172.16.101.101\ReleaseMark\$(BuildEnvironment)\</PublishDir><!– InstallUrl>It seems that installUrl doesn’t get picked up if set here, must be fed in with the msbuild command arguments.</InstallUrl –>
<!– ApplicationVersion is set in the publishENV.bat –>
</PropertyGroup>
</When>
<When Condition=” ‘$(BuildEnvironment)’ == ‘SUB’ “>
<PropertyGroup>
<BaseUrlPmsServices>https://ecspmsport1/Pms</BaseUrlPmsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEcsServices>https://ecspmsport1/Ecs</BaseUrlEcsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEdasServices>https://edas2-port1:1800/services</BaseUrlEdasServices&gt;
<BaseUrlHelp>http://ecspmshq/PmsHelp</BaseUrlHelp&gt;
<PublishDir>\\ecspmsport1\SmartClient\</PublishDir>
</PropertyGroup>
</When>
<When Condition=” ‘$(BuildEnvironment)’ == ‘DPS’ “>
<PropertyGroup>
<BaseUrlPmsServices>https://ecspmsport2/Pms</BaseUrlPmsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEcsServices>https://ecspmsport2/Ecs</BaseUrlEcsServices&gt;
<BaseUrlEdasServices>https://edas2-port2:1800/services</BaseUrlEdasServices&gt;
<BaseUrlHelp>http://ecspmshq/PmsHelp</BaseUrlHelp&gt;
<PublishDir>\\ecspmsport2\SmartClient\</PublishDir>
</PropertyGroup>
</When>
</Choose>

2009

12/08

CATEGORY

.Net
ClickOnce
MSBuild
SmartClient

TAGS

.Net
Build
ClickOnce
MSBuild
msbuild clickonce publish.htm
Publish
publish.htm

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