将文件复制到Azure WebRole上的输出目录

Question

We have an azure Webrole which we call as an API from other applications to convert webpages into a rendered byte array which we then attach as a pdf into emails. We do this using ABCpdf.

For our latest project we have to use a second engine from ABC (ABCGecko) in order to render our pages correctly. The ABCGecko engine requires manually copying to the output directory after build occurs, it doesn't happen automatically.

For a normal application this is no issue, I simply copy the required folder (XULRunner_38 for anyone who uses ABC) into the release after building but I can't figure out how to do this for an Azure WebRole and there doesn't seem to be anything much in the way of help from what I can see in google searches.

I'm assuming I either have to build the role and then adjust the package before I deploy, or deploy the role and then copy the folder across after. I can't figure out how to do this though.

If anyone has any ideas or has needed to manually copy files to an Azure Webrole in the past then I would greatly appreciate your help. Also I should mention that we use Visual Studio as our IDE and publish from within there in case that matters to anyone.

Answer 1

Azure web (and worker) roles allow you to define startup tasks, which allows you to call a script (eg powershell script, batch file) which can then perform actions such as copying files.

Oh, and if you don't want it to attempt copying in the event a role instance reboots, you'd need to do something like leaving yourself a "breadcrumb" somewhere to signal that you've already done your init work.

What you don't want to ever do is manual copying of content to your role instances. The moment those instances are updated (eg new Host OS update) or they're moved to another physical host, you'll lose any of the files you manually copied.

This is all independent of any IDE (aside from general support for the script language you're writing in), since your startup task is going to execute on each web role instance when it starts up.

More details about startup tasks are here .