I would agree, it is quite a shift. If you are going to use their Lab Management, I don't know that you really have an option to use the MSBuild style markup with that, this is what drove us towards the Workflow-based builds. The big difference to me was the additional control statements. It was hard to look at the flowchart at first to figure out where everything was. I liked the old way, and after working through updating our build, I have to admit it was pretty easy to customize and maintain.
From: Christopher Painter [mailto:chr...@iswix.com] Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2011 9:34 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; John Bergman; General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? I know what you mean. I've been trying to drink the kool-aid but so far I don't see any strategic or tactical advantage in going from msbuild to workflow. My msbuild automation worked really well and was elegant to boot. Workflow feels like treating build automation as if it's front page. Anyways I'm in Austin if anyone ever wants to get some BBQ at Rudy's. I'll also be up in Dallas for a few days next month. Chris ________________________________ From: "John Robbins" <j...@wintellect.com<mailto:j...@wintellect.com>> Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2011 8:26 PM To: "John Bergman" <john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com<mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com>>, "General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset." <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? Sorry! That I don't know. I try to avoid messing with TFS 2010 Build work flow. John Wintellect http://www.wintellect.com +1-877-968-5528 -----Original Message----- From: John Bergman [mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]<mailto:[mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 10:11 PM To: John Robbins; General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? John, I got that, but how would you invoke the build task from a Workflow based build, rather than a MSBuild-based build? You're right, Austin is pretty close. WE have a pretty big .Net community in our area too, not sure why we seem to always get bypassed for anything substantial. John -----Original Message----- From: John Robbins [mailto:j...@wintellect.com]<mailto:[mailto:j...@wintellect.com]> Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 12:05 AM To: John Bergman; General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? Hi John, Sorry for the misunderstanding. What my MSBuild files do is pull in Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.ProcessComponents.dll, which has a bunch of MSBuild tasks in it. The key task is GetBuildProperties where you can have it set a few properties through OutProperty elements. Here's the relevant code: <!-- Pull in the VS 2010 version of the TFS build components only if doing a full TFS Build.--> <UsingTask TaskName="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Tasks.GetBuildProperties" AssemblyFile="$(TeamBuildRefPath)\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.ProcessComponents.dll" Condition="'$(WintellectBuildType)'=='TFSBUILD'"/> <!-- The one target needed from TFS Build to pull out the build information. --> <Target Name="WintellectInitializeBuildProperties" Condition="'$(WintellectBuildType)'=='TFSBUILD'"> <GetBuildProperties TeamFoundationServerUrl="$(TeamFoundationServerUrl)" BuildUri="$(BuildUri)" Condition=" '$(IsDesktopBuild)' != 'true' "> <!-- I only need these two values so that's all I'll ask about. --> <Output TaskParameter="BuildDefinitionName" PropertyName="BuildDefinitionName" /> <Output TaskParameter="BuildNumber" PropertyName="BuildNumber" /> </GetBuildProperties> <Message Importance="high" Text="Hello : BuildUri=$(BuildUri)"/> </Target> You can see all of this in action with the Wintellect.TFSBuildNumber.targets file in the samples I mentioned below. Dallas isn't that far away from Austin. Anyway, you needed to get out of the office for a few days anyway. :D Hope it helps! John Wintellect http://www.wintellect.com +1-877-968-5528 -----Original Message----- From: John Bergman [mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]<mailto:[mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 9:58 PM To: John Robbins; General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? No, what I was asking was how do you get the build number out of the TFS build server into the files? You guys need to bring Devscovery to Dallas/Ft. Worth... -----Original Message----- From: John Robbins [mailto:j...@wintellect.com]<mailto:[mailto:j...@wintellect.com]> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 4:46 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; John Bergman Subject: RE: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? Hi John (Bergman :) ) As I mentioned all my build number stuff is part of your normal C#/VB/C++ .CS/VB/VCXPROJ files. Once you've edited your project files to create the version numbers targets (see the example I included), you'll just tell TFS Build to build your solution and the build numbers are automatically created. Is that what you were asking? John Wintellect http://www.wintellect.com +1-877-968-5528 -----Original Message----- From: John Bergman [mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]<mailto:[mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 10:16 AM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; chr...@deploymentengineering.com<mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? John (Robbins), Hey John, I don't see how the MSBuild items get invoked from a TFS Workflow-based build based on the information in your blog; How do you connect the two together? For others... John's blog has a link to Jim Lamb's article about how to create a custom WorkFlow activity (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2010/02/12/how-to-create-a-custom-workflow-activity-for-tfs-build-2010.aspx). John -----Original Message----- From: John Robbins [mailto:j...@wintellect.com]<mailto:[mailto:j...@wintellect.com]> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 9:01 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; chr...@deploymentengineering.com<mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? Hi, Just to throw out an alternative way of getting the TFS build number into you version data here's how I did it: http://www.wintellect.com/cs/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2009/11/09/tfs-2010-build-number-and-assembly-file-versions-completely-in-sync-with-only-msbuild-4-0.aspx http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2011/09/05/tfs-2010-build-numbers-file-versions-from-inside-your-c-and-c-projects.aspx http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2011/09/11/more-on-tfs-2010-build-numbers-inside-your-projects.aspx John Bergman's way is excellent but mine goes right into the project file so it doesn't require a custom TFS Build action in the workflow. John Wintellect http://www.wintellect.com +1-877-968-5528 -----Original Message----- From: John Bergman [mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]<mailto:[mailto:john.berg...@xpedienttechnologies.com]> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 5:34 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; chr...@deploymentengineering.com<mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? I created a custom Activity that created a Wix Include file. I had it just write the file new each time. The contents of our file looks like this <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- Note that this file will be overridden by the build server. --> <Include> <?define MajorVersion = "1" ?> <?define MinorVersion = "62" ?> <?define BuildNumber = "112" ?> <?define Revision = "1083" ?> <?define FullVersion = "1.62.112.1083" ?> <!--WiX Installer Versions are Major.Minor.Revision --> </Include> Then I just included it in all the wix markup to use it. Its pretty straight forward. I probably wrote more to the file than I needed, but I didn't want to have to revisit getting the custom activity to work. Once you create the activity, you need to update your build agents to pull the assembly from source control, I placed it into $/root/BuildProcessTemplates/CustomActivities. Using the code activity, you can update the build process template to hook up the two properties (VersionInfoFileName and VersionNumber). I actually use the same technique to write an assemblyinfo file that has the version information in it as well. In my case, I don't check it in and out each time, because the build regenerates it... you could easily do that by adding a invokeprocess activity before/after the UpdateWixVersion activity (remember to use the **NO_CI** Magic so you don't get caught in a continuous loop building... The source for the code activity looks like this: [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.All)] public sealed class UpdateWixVersion : CodeActivity { /// <summary> /// Defines the file mask of all of the files for which the build number of the assembly version must be updated /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> VersionInfoFileName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Defines (uses) the VersionNumber as initialized in the build process template. /// </summary> [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<string> VersionNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Execute the Update Version Number build step. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">Contains the workflow context</param> protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) { //-- Get the input parameters string strVersionInfoFileName = context.GetValue(this.VersionInfoFileName); string strVersionNumber = context.GetValue(this.VersionNumber); Version verCurrentVersionInfo = new Version(strVersionNumber); //-- Generate the text... StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.AppendLine("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>"); sb.AppendLine("<!-- Note that this file will be overridden by the build server. -->"); sb.AppendLine("<Include>"); sb.AppendLine(string.Format(" <?define MajorVersion = \"{0}\" ?>", verCurrentVersionInfo.Major)); sb.AppendLine(string.Format(" <?define MinorVersion = \"{0}\" ?>", verCurrentVersionInfo.Minor)); sb.AppendLine(string.Format(" <?define BuildNumber = \"{0}\" ?>", verCurrentVersionInfo.Build)); sb.AppendLine(string.Format(" <?define Revision = \"{0}\" ?>", verCurrentVersionInfo.Revision)); sb.AppendLine(string.Format(" <?define FullVersion = \"{0}\" ?>", strVersionNumber)); sb.AppendLine(" <!--WiX Installer Versions are Major.Minor.Revision -->"); sb.AppendLine("</Include>"); //-- Save the file text... if (File.Exists(strVersionInfoFileName)) { //-- ensure that the file is writeable FileAttributes fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(strVersionInfoFileName); File.SetAttributes(strVersionInfoFileName, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); File.WriteAllText(strVersionInfoFileName, sb.ToString()); //-- restore the file's original attributes File.SetAttributes(strVersionInfoFileName, fileAttributes); } else { throw new Exception(string.Format("UpdateWixVersion: {0} does not exist.", VersionInfoFileName)); } } } Hope it helps, John -----Original Message----- From: David Rickard (USA) [mailto:davri...@microsoft.com]<mailto:[mailto:davri...@microsoft.com]> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 4:54 PM To: chr...@deploymentengineering.com<mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com>; General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? Again, thanks for all the tips. I'm setting my .wixproj project up now and have gotten to the point where I need to pass the version number from the TFS build in. You said it "takes a little bit more work": how did you end up doing that? -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Painter [mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com]<mailto:[mailto:chr...@deploymentengineering.com]> Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 4:09 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.; wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? The simplest way is to use Votive to generate a .SLN / .WIXPROJ and then add the sln configuration | platform to to the build parameters in the build definition. You shouldn't have to do any customizations in workflow as the Default Template will work out of the box. Passing a ProductVersion property takes a little bit more work on the msbuild side ( build parameters and preprocessor definitions in the wixproj and wixs ) but it doesn't require any workflow changes. ---------------------------------------- From: "David Rickard (USA)" <davri...@microsoft.com<mailto:davri...@microsoft.com>> Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 5:11 PM To: "wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>" <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>> Subject: [WiX-users] Best way to invoke Wix from a TFS build workflow? I need to build some MSIs with Wix during our TFS build. Our current TFS build is using the Windows Workflow XAML files to declare the build logic. What's the best way to invoke Wix from there? Directly invoking the process from an activity? Going down to a powershell script and calling it from there? Are there any custom Wix activities to use? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy2 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy2 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy2 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net<mailto:WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
