Hi!
In our team we are looking into the possibility to use CI with our Umbraco sites. Our goal is to perform builds on check-ins and deploy that build to a web server that runs on-premise.
We are considering using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to manage our builds and deploys.
We are not interested in deploying documenttypes at this moment. We can do that manually or use Courier.
One question that came up during our time experimenting with this new workflow is:
What to do with all the umbraco files?
Somehow umbraco and umbraco_client folders need to be a part of the site. But is it really necessary to download all the files upon every build? How should the build server handle this? Just install Umbraco Nuget package every time a new commit is pushed? Or can we somehow exclude all the umbraco files?
How many of you are using Octopus Deploy? It seems like a very popular tool for handling deployments.
I am pretty sure many of you have struggled with this in your own projects so please share your thoughts with us!
In my current role we have a CI setup but using Bamboo from Atlassian.
With our automated deploys we simply deploy the specific files required for a standard update, ie NOT the "umbraco" and "umbraco_client" directories.
This has all been done via specific script files to provide the granularity of which files to deploy.
In terms of the "umbraco" and "umbraco_client" directories - you should only worry about these when you are upgrading the version of Umbraco. And typically when upgrading you need to check config files, etc and so it more of a manual process anyway.
Not sure this helps, but happy to provide more thoughts if needed.
Thanks for your answer Nigel!
Omitt the umbraco folders seems like the best way to go.
So you have different build configurations for your applications. One "full" and one "standard"?
I guess the full configuration installs Umbraco through Nuget, is that right?
I'm a bit interested in the script files you're mentioning. Do you have any examples that you can share?
Bad news sorry re the script files - I started a new job this week and so all the bamboo scripts are no longer accessible. They weren't overly complicated to be honest and everything I coded was simply form Google searching with zero prior knowledge of batch files / powershell scripting.
Re the different build configurations, we had a set number of websites to manage and so it was simply the different environments for each site - there was not the need to install nuget packages, etc. I am guessing you could develop it to that extent including creating databases, etc, but didn't have the need.
Re liking Bamboo - I enjoyed working with it, but haven't had the need to learn any other CI software and therefore be able to compare. I mainly wrote batch scripts to accomplish what was needed, but given powershell scripting is available with "Azureland" I would suggest getting to grips with that as a language.
The Atlassian suite is good, but if developing in .NET I guess it is ideal to integrate builds, etc within the Microsoft product suite. However budget may come into play and so Bamboo works well is you are happy to have a somewhat fragmented setup. We had Hipchat installed also and so had notifications sent to chat rooms on build failures - this aided quick action to rectify.
So a bit of a fence sitter overall - happy to work with the tools available.
Implementing Continuous Integration?
Hi! In our team we are looking into the possibility to use CI with our Umbraco sites. Our goal is to perform builds on check-ins and deploy that build to a web server that runs on-premise.
We are considering using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to manage our builds and deploys. We are not interested in deploying documenttypes at this moment. We can do that manually or use Courier.
One question that came up during our time experimenting with this new workflow is:
What to do with all the umbraco files?
Somehow umbraco and umbraco_client folders need to be a part of the site. But is it really necessary to download all the files upon every build? How should the build server handle this? Just install Umbraco Nuget package every time a new commit is pushed? Or can we somehow exclude all the umbraco files?
How many of you are using Octopus Deploy? It seems like a very popular tool for handling deployments.
I am pretty sure many of you have struggled with this in your own projects so please share your thoughts with us!
Hi Johannes
In my current role we have a CI setup but using Bamboo from Atlassian.
With our automated deploys we simply deploy the specific files required for a standard update, ie NOT the "umbraco" and "umbraco_client" directories.
This has all been done via specific script files to provide the granularity of which files to deploy.
In terms of the "umbraco" and "umbraco_client" directories - you should only worry about these when you are upgrading the version of Umbraco. And typically when upgrading you need to check config files, etc and so it more of a manual process anyway.
Not sure this helps, but happy to provide more thoughts if needed.
Cheers, Nigel
Thanks for your answer Nigel! Omitt the umbraco folders seems like the best way to go.
So you have different build configurations for your applications. One "full" and one "standard"? I guess the full configuration installs Umbraco through Nuget, is that right?
I'm a bit interested in the script files you're mentioning. Do you have any examples that you can share?
And what do you think of Bamboo? Is it any good?
Hi Johannes
Bad news sorry re the script files - I started a new job this week and so all the bamboo scripts are no longer accessible. They weren't overly complicated to be honest and everything I coded was simply form Google searching with zero prior knowledge of batch files / powershell scripting.
Re the different build configurations, we had a set number of websites to manage and so it was simply the different environments for each site - there was not the need to install nuget packages, etc. I am guessing you could develop it to that extent including creating databases, etc, but didn't have the need.
Re liking Bamboo - I enjoyed working with it, but haven't had the need to learn any other CI software and therefore be able to compare. I mainly wrote batch scripts to accomplish what was needed, but given powershell scripting is available with "Azureland" I would suggest getting to grips with that as a language.
The Atlassian suite is good, but if developing in .NET I guess it is ideal to integrate builds, etc within the Microsoft product suite. However budget may come into play and so Bamboo works well is you are happy to have a somewhat fragmented setup. We had Hipchat installed also and so had notifications sent to chat rooms on build failures - this aided quick action to rectify.
So a bit of a fence sitter overall - happy to work with the tools available.
Cheers, Nigel
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