Web Deployment through MSDeploy.exe

Question

I'm configuring a CI build server with Jenkins. After the build steps I'd like to deploy the website.

When publishing the the website from VisualStudio I published by Web Deploy. I like that method because it actually publish those file which have changed, so the deploy is really quick.

Now on the build server I'm trying to do the same: build the application (using MSBuild.exe), and then deploy the application (using MSDeploy.exe?).

I've seen some post where they deploy the application using MSBuild.exe and others using MSDeploy.exe, is there a significant difference in there?

Do you have any advice that could help with this?

Thanks and advanced.

Answer 1

Use MSBuild to create an MSDeploy package and then MSDeploy.exe to deploy that package to any environments. This link should help you gain a better understanding of how WebDeploy/MSDeploy works.

http://dotnetcatch.com/2016/02/25/the-anatomy-of-a-webdeploy-package/

Whats REALLY cool is you can also use MSDeploy to deploy databases and non-web applications too. We have fully automated the deployment of 50+ products using this method.

http://dotnetcatch.com/2016/02/10/deploying-a-database-project-with-msdeploy/

http://dotnetcatch.com/2016/03/18/deploy-non-web-apps-with-msdeploy/

UPDATED - Basic steps to use MSDeploy packages:

1. Create a package in your build by adding the /t:Package arg to your MSBuild call
2. Store the resulting package form the bin directory to your artifact repo

3. Call MSDeploy.exe to deploy the package to your target server. There are lots of options here but the basic command follows:

   "c:\Program Files (x86)\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy V3\msdeploy.exe" -verb:sync -source:package=mypackage.zip -dest:auto,computerName=localhost

Answer 2

Even easier using current Visual Studio and dotnet, create your Publish Profile in Visual Studio, then use dotnet on the CI server:

dotnet publish /p:PublishProfile=PROFILE-NAME /p:Password=*****

https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/blob/master/aspnetcore/host-and-deploy/visual-studio-publish-profiles.md