Using msbuild to execute a File System Publish Profile

Question

I have a c   Net 4 0 project created with VS2010 and now being accessed with VS2012   I m trying to publish only the needed files from this website to a destination location  C  builds MyProject Files    My file structure    ProjectRoot MyProject csproj   ProjectRoot Properties PublishProfiles FileSystemDebug pubxml  I m running the following via MSBuild   C  Windows Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319 MSBuild exe   ProjectRoot MyProject csproj  p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile   ProjectRoot Properties PublishProfiles FileSystemDebug pubxml  Here s the xml in FileSystemDebug pubxml   lt Project ToolsVersion  4 0  xmlns  http   schemas microsoft com developer msbuild 2003  gt     lt PropertyGroup gt       lt WebPublishMethod gt FileSystem lt  WebPublishMethod gt       lt LastUsedBuildConfiguration gt Release lt  LastUsedBuildConfiguration gt       lt LastUsedPlatform gt Any CPU lt  LastUsedPlatform gt       lt SiteUrlToLaunchAfterPublish   gt       lt ExcludeApp Data gt False lt  ExcludeApp Data gt       lt publishUrl gt C  builds MyProject  lt  publishUrl gt       lt DeleteExistingFiles gt True lt  DeleteExistingFiles gt     lt  PropertyGroup gt   lt  Project gt    The resulting behavior is    a zip file is created here   ProjectRoot obj Debug Package MyProject zip Nothing is deployed to  lt publishUrl gt C  builds MyProject  lt  publishUrl gt  WTF the zip file that is created is a pigs breakfast and full of files that aren t needed for the application    When I run this publish profile through visual studio a folder is created at  C  builds MyProject  and contains the exact artifacts that I want   How do I get this simple result from msbuild

User · Answer

FYI  Same problem with running on a build server  Jenkins with msbuild 15 installed  driven from VS 2017 on a  NET Core 2 1 web project    In my case it was the use of the  publish  target with msbuild that ignored the profile    So my msbuild command started with   msbuild  t restore build publish   This correctly triggerred the publish process  but no combination or variation of   p PublishProfile FolderProfile  ever worked to select the profile I wanted to use   FolderProfile     When I stopped using the publish target   msbuild  t restore build  p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile FolderProfile   I  foolishly  thought that it would make no difference  but as soon as I used the DeployOnBuild switch it correctly picked up the profile

User · Answer

Run from the project folder msbuild   p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile  quot release-file pubxml quot   p AspnetMergePath  quot C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft SDKs Windows v10 0A bin NETFX 4 8 Tools quot   p Configuration Release This takes care of web config Transform and AspnetMergePath

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Still had trouble after trying all of the answers above  I use Visual Studio 2013   Nothing was copied to the publish folder   The catch was that if I run MSBuild with an individual project instead of a solution  I have to put an additional parameter that specifies Visual Studio version    p VisualStudioVersion 12 0   12 0 is for VS2013  replace with the version you use  Once I added this parameter  it just worked   The complete command line looks like this   MSBuild C  PathToMyProject MyProject csproj  p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile MyPublishProfile  p VisualStudioVersion 12 0   I ve found it here   http   www asp net mvc overview deployment visual-studio-web-deployment command-line-deployment  They state      If you specify an individual project instead of a solution  you have to add a parameter that specifies the Visual Studio version

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Found the answer here  http   www digitallycreated net Blog 59 locally-publishing-a-vs2010-asp net-web-application-using-msbuild     Visual Studio 2010 has great new Web Application Project publishing   features that allow you to easy publish your web app project with a   click of a button  Behind the scenes the Web config transformation and   package building is done by a massive MSBuild script that   s imported   into your project file  found at  C  Program Files    x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 Web Microsoft Web Publishing targets     Unfortunately  the script is hugely complicated  messy and   undocumented  other then some oft-badly spelled and mostly useless   comments in the file   A big flowchart of that file and some   documentation about how to hook into it would be nice  but seems to be   sadly lacking  or at least I can   t find it        Unfortunately  this means performing publishing via the command line   is much more opaque than it needs to be  I was surprised by the lack   of documentation in this area  because these days many shops use a   continuous integration server and some even do automated deployment    which the VS2010 publishing features could help a lot with   so I   would have thought that enabling this  easily   would be have been a   fairly main requirement for the feature       Anyway  after digging through the Microsoft Web Publishing targets   file for hours and banging my head against the trial and error wall    I   ve managed to figure out how Visual Studio seems to perform its   magic one click    Publish to File System    and    Build Deployment   Package    features  I   ll be getting into a bit of MSBuild scripting  so   if you   re not familiar with MSBuild I suggest you check out this crash   course MSDN page       Publish to File System      The VS2010 Publish To File System Dialog Publish to File System took   me a while to nut out because I expected some sensible use of MSBuild   to be occurring  Instead  VS2010 does something quite weird  it calls   on MSBuild to perform a sort of half-deploy that prepares the web   app   s files in your project   s obj folder  then it seems to do a manual   copy of those files  ie  outside of MSBuild  into your target publish   folder  This is really whack behaviour because MSBuild is designed to   copy files around  and other build-related things   so it   d make sense   if the whole process was just one MSBuild target that VS2010 called   on  not a target then a manual copy       This means that doing this via MSBuild on the command-line isn   t as   simple as invoking your project file with a particular target and   setting some properties  You   ll need to do what VS2010 ought to have   done  create a target yourself that performs the half-deploy then   copies the results to the target folder  To edit your project file    right click on the project in VS2010 and click Unload Project  then   right click again and click Edit  Scroll down until you find the   Import element that imports the web application targets    Microsoft WebApplication targets  this file itself imports the   Microsoft Web Publishing targets file mentioned earlier   Underneath   this line we   ll add our new target  called PublishToFileSystem     lt Target Name  PublishToFileSystem          DependsOnTargets  PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder  gt       lt Error Condition     PublishDestination                   Text  The PublishDestination property must be set to the intended publishing destination     gt       lt MakeDir Condition   Exists   PublishDestination                 Directories    PublishDestination     gt        lt ItemGroup gt           lt PublishFiles Include     PackageTempDir            gt       lt  ItemGroup gt        lt Copy SourceFiles    PublishFiles             DestinationFiles    PublishFiles- gt    PublishDestination    RecursiveDir   Filename   Extension               SkipUnchangedFiles  True    gt   lt  Target gt       This target depends on the   PipelinePreDeployCopyAllFilesToOneFolder target  which is what VS2010   calls before it does its manual copy  Some digging around in   Microsoft Web Publishing targets shows that calling this target causes   the project files to be placed into the directory specified by the   property  PackageTempDir       The first task we call in our target is the Error task  upon which   we   ve placed a condition that ensures that the task only happens if   the PublishDestination property hasn   t been set  This will catch you   and error out the build in case you   ve forgotten to specify the   PublishDestination property  We then call the MakeDir task to create   that PublishDestination directory if it doesn   t already exist       We then define an Item called PublishFiles that represents all the   files found under the  PackageTempDir folder  The Copy task is then   called which copies all those files to the Publish Destination folder    The DestinationFiles attribute on the Copy element is a bit complex    it performs a transform of the items and converts their paths to new   paths rooted at the PublishDestination folder  check out Well-Known   Item Metadata to see what those    s mean        To call this target from the command-line we can now simply perform   this command  obviously changing the project file name and properties   to suit you     msbuild Website csproj   p Platform AnyCPU Configuration Release PublishDestination F  Temp Publish   t PublishToFileSystem

User · Answer

It looks to me like your publish profile is not being used  and doing some default packaging  The Microsoft Web Publish targets do all what you are doing above  it selects the correct targets based on the config   I got mine to work no problem from TeamCity MSBuild step  but I did specify an explicit path to the profile  you just have to call it by name with no  pubxml  e g  FileSystemDebug   It will be found so long as in the standard folder  which yours is   Example   C  Windows Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319 MSBuild exe   ProjectRoot MyProject csproj  p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile FileSystemDebug  Note this was done using the Visual Studio 2012 versions of the Microsoft Web Publish targets  normally located at  C  Program Files  x86  MSBuild Microsoft VisualStudio v11 0 Web   Check out the deploy folder for the specific deployment types targets that are used

User · Answer

Actually I merged all your answers to my own solution how to solve the above problem    I create the pubxml file according my needs Then I copy all the parameters from pubxml file to my own list of parameters   p foo bar  for msbuild exe I throw away the pubxml file   The result is like that   msbuild  t restore  t build  p WebPublishMethod FileSystem  p publishUrl C  builds MyProject   p DeleteExistingFiles True  p LastUsedPlatform  Any CPU   p Configuration Release

User · Answer

First check the Visual studio version of the developer PC which can publish the solution project    as shown is for VS 2013    p VisualStudioVersion 12 0   add the above command line to specify what kind of a visual studio version should build the project  As previous answers  this might happen when we are trying to publish only one project  not the whole solution   So the complete code would be something like this   C  Windows Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319 msbuild exe   C  Program Files  x86  Jenkins workspace Jenkinssecondsample MVCSampleJenkins MVCSampleJenkins csproj   T Build Package  p Configuration DEBUG  p OutputPath  obj DEBUG   p DeployIisAppPath  Default Web Site jenkinsdemoapp   p VisualStudioVersion 12 0

User · Answer

FYI  I had the same issue with Visual Studio 2015  After many of hours trying  I can now do msbuild myproject csproj  p DeployOnBuild true  p PublishProfile myprofile   I had to edit my  csproj file to get it working  It contained a line like this    lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v10 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets     Condition  false    gt    I changed this line as follows    lt Import Project    MSBuildExtensionsPath32  Microsoft VisualStudio v14 0 WebApplications Microsoft WebApplication targets    gt     I changed 10 0 to 14 0  not sure whether this was necessary  But I definitely had to remove the condition part

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