Setup publish to folder using VSTS

Question

I was using publish to folder option through Visual Studio by right-clicking on the project -> publish -> publish to folder. Result was always ready-to-copy project with applied transformations. I wanted to automate this process using VSTS and have setup build on VSTS.
I used next steps:
- NuGet restore
- Build solution
- Publish Build Artifacts to $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)
- Windows machine file copy from $(build.artifactstagingdirectory) to remote machine using admin login and password

And finally I'm getting zip package on remote machine with complicated folder structure without applied transformations inside at all.
What is wrong? How I can setup same "publish to folder" as in Visual Studio but using VSTS?

Answer 1

You are publishing web application through File System method, it is based on the specified configuration (eg Debug, Release) to transform web.config. So you need to check which configuration you specified in build solution task (eg Visual Studio Build task)

Simple tasks:

1. NuGet Tool Installer task
2. NuGet restore task
3. Visual Studio Build task (MSBuild Arguments: /p:SkipInvalidConfigurations=true /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=FileSystem /p:publishUrl="$(build.artifactstagingdirectory)\\\\" /p:DeployDefaultTarget=WebPublish ; Platform: $(BuildPlatform) ; Configuration: $(BuildConfiguration) ) Note: BuildPlatform and BuildConfiguration are build variables. It will publish web app to artifacts directory ([agent working folder]/1/a)
4. Publish Build Artifacts (Path to publish: $(build.artifactstagingdirectory) )

Answer 2

Add below Target to your .csproj to enable transforming config files

<Target Name="TransformConfigFiles" AfterTargets="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(TransformConfigFiles)'=='true'">
<ItemGroup>
  <DeleteAfterBuild Include="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\Web.*.config" />
</ItemGroup>
<TransformXml Source="Web.config" Transform="$(ProjectConfigTransformFileName)" Destination="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\Web.config" />
<Delete Files="@(DeleteAfterBuild)" /></Target>

In your build solution step add the following build arguments "/p:TransformConfigFiles=true" will make the config transformation using the above added target to .csproj

/p:TransformConfigFiles=true /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:WebPublishMethod=Package /p:PackageAsSingleFile=true /p:OutDir="$(build.stagingDirectory)"

Then you can use a publish step to publish your $(build.stagingDirectory) contents. You can use $(build.stagingDirectory)_PublishedWebsites as path to publish if you only need the website output.

This will allow you to get the ms deploy package as well as xcopy deploy published website files.

You can use copy files task before the publish task to copy any additional files if you have any to $(build.stagingDirectory) and get them published as build artifacts.

Use VSTS release management with deployment groups to deploy your application to target server. You can use IIS deploy task to deploy to IIS using ms deploy package. If you are using web deploy package you can use a parameters.xml in your web app to get the web config parameters assigned to .setparameters.xml so that you can change values in the deployment time using IIS deployment task.