How can I have teamcity run a .bat file on each successful build?

Question

I have a teamcity (4.something) install that creates .wsp file for deployment to sharepoint. Currently I have to copy the wsp out of the build artifacts directory and into a little deploy folder I have created. In the folder I run a .bat that deploys the new .wsp to our test server. What steps can I take to automate this?

Either copy the .bat into the artifacts folder and update the paths etc or copy from the artifacts folder into the 'deploy' folder and run the .bat from there.

I am a neophyte when it comes to the intricacies (or basics!) of MSBuild and the like... so hand holding is appreciated!

Answer 1

In more recent versions of TeamCity...

In the build definition you can identify artifacts which can be copied/zipped. Artifacts can then be downloaded manually or referenced from another build (Artifact Dependency).

You can setup a 'build configuration' to do your deployment directly from artifacts produced by your ci build.

• Create a build to do your deployment
• Build Step
  • Run: Executable with parameters
  • Command executable: .bat file (make sure it as part of the ci build artifacts generated)
  • Command parameters: whatever parameters your patch files needs
• Dependencies
  • Add New Artifact dependency
  • Depend on: select the ci build you want to deploy
  • GetArtifacts from: Last successful build
  • Artifact rules: +:**/*.*

So, given artifacts (like your batch file) are in the CI build... You now have a 'deploy' build. When you run it (manually or setup a Build Trigger) it will copy all the CI build artifacts to it's working directory (Artifact Dependency) and then run your batch file to do the deployment.

Pretty slick.

note: just make sure that the account running the TeamCity BuildAgent has permissions to do all the deployment stuff.

Hope this helps somebody as it took me a while to sort this out ;)

Answer 2

I've done this by creating a nant task, and then having TeamCity execute the nant task. It's more of a pain than it should be. You should be able to do the same as a post-build event with MSBuild.