DC Developers

For our fifth post about  Octopus Deploy , we'll share some additional information and troubleshooting tips. 1.  Visual Studio setup 2.  Team Foundation Server setup 3.  Octopus Dashboard setup 4.  Project Features 5.  Extras Troubleshooting Tips Below are some common issues we ran into during the Build setup. If you get a  "...NuGet.exe restore ... exited with code 1."  error, a  possible fix is to clear the NuGet cache on the build server Delete all files in %LocalAppData%\NuGet\Cache If you get a  400 Bad Request  error and a  "...NuGet.exe push ... exited with code 1."  error You may be trying to re-publish the SAME VERSION of the package See the  Versioning  section below to properly set it up Not all TFS templates seem to work as expected.  If you're creating a new build, use the  DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml  OR the  GitTemplate.12.xaml  for GIT-based solution...

For our fourth post about  Octopus Deploy , we'll discuss the Octopus Project Features configuration. 1.  Visual Studio setup 2.  Team Foundation Server setup 3.  Octopus Dashboard setup 4.  Project Features 5.  Extras Navigate to the Project page on the Octopus Dashboard by clicking on the Projects > Project Name link in the top menu. Variables In the left menu, click on  Variables . These are custom Octopus-stored variables that can be used for two main purposes: Octopus configuration variables that can be used across projects e.g. define a custom installation folder. You'd have one for each environment or if it's the same simply add all the desired environments in the last  Scope  column. Web.config connection strings and appSettings. If the differences between your web.configs are strictly limited to these two categories then you don't need to rely on multiple web.configs anymore and use Octopus exclusively. ...

For our third post about  Octopus Deploy , we'll discuss the Octopus Dashboard setup. 1.  Visual Studio setup 2.  Team Foundation Server setup 3.  Octopus Dashboard setup 4.  Project Features 5.  Extras After prepping your Visual Studio solution and TFS Build, the remaining step is to configure Octopus using the steps below You will need to get access to the Octopus Dashboard from your System Administrator before proceeding. How a typical project would look like on the Octopus Dashboard: Step 1 - Add Environment(s) Typically, this is a step accomplished by your System Administrator which consists of adding all your servers e.g. Development, Staging, QA, Integration, Production etc. To access, click on  Environments  in the top dashboard menu. In the example above, you only have one server but there could be multiple servers where the code gets deployed to simultaneously. Notice the gray tags which correspond to you...

In our second post about  Octopus Deploy , we'll go over the Team Foundation Server build setup. 1.  Visual Studio setup 2.  Team Foundation Server setup 3.  Octopus Dashboard setup 4.  Project Features 5.  Extras Team Foundation Server Setup We're assuming you already have an existing TFS Build setup for your solution, if not create one so that you can then apply the changes listed below. Step 1 - Open an existing TFS Build In Visual Studio, open Team Explorer then click on Builds. Right-click the desired build and click on Edit Build Definition. Step 2 - Modify the Build path Click on the Process tab in the left menu then expand Items to Build: Set Configuration to Build to  Any CPU/Release Set Projects to Build to the  build.proj  file instead of your typical solution file (.sln) $/TFSFolder/SolutionFolder/WebProjectFolder/ build.proj Step 3 - Get an Octopus API Key Typically your system administrator...

We recently added  Octopus Deploy  to our continuous deployment pipeline. It  helped us automate and streamline our deployment process in a big way plus it's become an essential part of any new application we bring on board. It makes our development and testing much easier with almost no IT intervention even for live environments. Best of all, we have much less friction and better communication between developers and system administrators, which as you probably already know is not always the case ;-) We decided to share our experience working with Octopus through a series of articles listed below: 1.  Visual Studio setup 2.  Team Foundation Server setup 3.  Octopus Dashboard setup 4.  Project Features 5.  Extras Configuring your existing .NET Web Application includes the following tasks: In this article, we'll discuss the  "Prep Solution"  task via Visual Studio. Visual Studio Setup According to the  Octopus docume...