Multiple Solutions in my TFS Project

Question

My TFS Project has many visual studio solutions in it.

Each VS Solution has many "Projects"

Obviously a TFS Project != VS Project.

I am following along Brian Harry's blog post on "Continuous Deployment to Azure with Team Foundation Service"

When I setup TFS publishing in Azure it asks me to authorize a TFS Connection and wants my project name.

myproject.ftspreview.com

That's it?  How am I supposed to specify the solution/webproject that I want to deploy to the Azure website?

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Thanks, Terrence

Answer 1

Terrence,

There're two parts to the connection. First your have to connect your Azure account to your TFService account. That's the step I think you are referring to. After that's done, then you set up the individual builds and direct them where to go. That's the part that starts after the text "At this point, your Azure and Team Foundation Service accounts are linked." on http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/06/07/announcing-continuous-deployment-to-azure-with-team-foundation-service.aspx. Please read that entire post, start to finish, and let us know if you have further questions.

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Trevor Hancock (Microsoft)
Please remember to "Mark As Answer" the replies that help.

Answer 2

Well I appreciate your "tip" about reading the whole article. 

Before I post a question online I do lots of searching for answers and of course I read the whole article.  But to be sure I went back and picked up right where you sugggested after the line "At this point..." and re-read the whole article. 

The article does not address my question.

Brian writes "As part of linking the accounts, we also created a continuous integration build definition that will build and deploy your app to Azure each time you check in. "

One of the many "VS solutions" that are in my "TFS Project" has a website project thats build definition is using the AzureContinuousDeployment.ll.xaml template.  When I queue up a build it just builds it and puts it in the drops folder like it always has.

The article and nothing I have read describes how to indicate what solution and then what website project will get deployed to that Azure website that just got linked.

I may have 3 websites, all of them can't deploy to that linked Azure website.  So there must be some indication in the build definition that tells it to deploy to the Linked Azure website and not the drops folder.

Brian's article addresses an situation where the user has one VS web project that gets linked to Azure so it is a one to one.  I have a many to one setup.

I am clearly missing something, and I am slow, so please spell it out for me.

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Thanks, Terrence

Answer 3

Hi Terrence,

To specify which solution you want to build you will need to set the Solution to Build property in the build definition editor to that solution.  From that point we will deploy the first web application alphabetically in that solution.  If you have a specific web application you want to deploy you will need to create a solution with only that web application in it.

The setup wizard from the azure portal does it's best to set everything up for you based on some simply conventions of only 1 solution in your team project and only 1 website in your solution.  This is something we expect to address in the future in order to provide users with more flexibility and control.

Answer 4

Thanks for your comments Chris.

>>you will need to set the Solution to Build property in the build definition editor to that solution.

How will you know what Solution to look at?  I have 3 solutions in my TFS Project.  I have 5 build definitions.

So far I have attached my TFS Project to one website, how do you know what solution to look into to find a build definition that has the website to deploy?

I am sorry, I am just not getting it, but I need to so I can complete this task in our journey on evalutating Azure as a replacement for our rack of servers in our datacenter.

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Thanks, Terrence

Answer 5

Trevor, your reply is by no means a correct answer.  Have you read Chris's post and my response?  We are dealing with a more complicated issue than a walk trough of the feature with a simple TFS Project.

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Thanks, Terrence

Answer 6

Terrence,

I am sorry our attempts to help you have not been... helpful. I hope that something in the following will address your question. If not, please reply with a detailed description of your team project\solution\project set up in TFService, and details about your Azure account (what sorts of projects are you building, etc.) and we will try to assist further. 

• http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/publishing-with-tfs/
  
• http://mikefourie.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/using-continuous-deployment-to-azure-with-team-foundation-service/
  
• http://bretstateham.com/super-easy-continuous-integration-with-azure-websites-hosted-tfs-and-visual-studio-2012/
  
• http://mikefourie.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/using-continuous-deployment-to-azure-with-team-foundation-service/ 

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Trevor Hancock (Microsoft)
Please remember to "Mark As Answer" the replies that help.

Answer 7

Thanks Trevor, I will read those webpages and see what I come up with and get back with you.

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Thanks, Terrence

Answer 8

Hi Terrence,

It's been almost two weeks since we last heard from you. Were you able to set this up?

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Trevor Hancock (Microsoft)
Please remember to "Mark As Answer" the replies that help.

Answer 9

As we have not heard from you in some time I am marking this question as ANSWERED for now. Please reply if that is not the case and we will help further.

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Trevor Hancock (Microsoft)
Please remember to "Mark As Answer" the replies that help.

Answer 10

Well, I went back and setup a simple TFS project with one VS Solution with one website in it and that works.

There does not appear to be support for a real world solution where you have a TFS project with multiple vs solutions each with multple vs projects.  There is no way to indicate which vs solution to target as the solution with the website that will be deployed. 

So I wouldn't mark it as "answered", I would post a message that says "we don't support this real world scenario yet" and then mark that as the answer.

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Thank you, Terrence

Answer 11

Hi Folks

This is bad for us too.

Our current in-house TFS standards are such that we have a formal directory TREE of projects and folders, like:

myserver\DefaultCollection

  3rdParty (software, services, layered products, controls,etc.)

  Project1

    v1

    v2

  Project2

    v1

    v2

  Project3 (internal services core -> Project1, Project2, etc. (may or may not use them)

   v1

   v2

  Project4 (Core, all projects referencing these routines MUST use these references -> LDAP, SSRS, Utilities, etc.)

   v1

   v2

Finally, often times we version our web solutions (which might have other projects in them).  This way we can have support developers doing what's need in v1, while developing new things in v2

Rob

Answer 12

what I'd like to see is some sort of (normal) TFS upload to Azure TFS (or pull/sync) which keeps EVERYTHING INTACT in terms of folders (and has the same look and feel as the folders section in Visual Studio (for both local and cloud TFS)

Rob

Answer 13

Hi Terrence,

Now some time has passed - have you been able to resolve this?

I'm just hitting the same problem - I have just the one solution in a TFS project, but there are multiple website projects in there that I'd like to look at deploying - ideally to different Azure sites, that would be just great! Really a build definition needs to have selectors for the path to use for deployment (writing that sounds so stupidly obvious, I'm wondering if it's been done by now... or we'd just missed it before) - surely that's possible?

Many thanks!

Tim

Answer 14

Tim, I just ended up creating a solution with just one website.  I will be getting back on this project in the near future.  I hope the story has gotten better.

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Thank you, Terrence