Publish COM Add-In with VSTS Build Pipeline

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Publish COM Add-In with VSTS Build Pipeline
 
Jamil Nawaz




Posts: 22
 Joined: 2018-02-10
Hi,

We are building a Excel COM Add-In. I review the deployment strategies in the documentation, and we are interested in the Click-Once deployment. Further, I saw the published option in Project right click, which helps to publish Add-In and make the *.application file. Which we can published on the specified url.

The customer is looking to automate this publish process via VSTS Build Pipeline. They are planning to host the Click-Once installer on the Azure Blob storage or Azure Web App or VM on the Azure. But mainly they are interested to know, how we can automate this publish process.

Can you please comment on this? How that can be achieved?

Regards,
Jamil
Posted 10 Feb, 2018 13:03:13 Top
Simon Fisher




Posts: 17
 Joined: 2016-07-12
Hi Jamil, I don't have a solution for you - this is something that I'm looking to set up myself as well. If anyone else has already achieved this, please let us know :)

However I've done a little bit of thinking and I believe it's possible with a bit of work. This article might be the starting point: https://www.add-in-express.com/docs/net-deployment-considerations.php#publishing-from-command-promt

I think something like the following might work:

- Ensure the Add-In-Express tools (adxpublisher.exe etc) are available on the build agent (this may require a custom agent, not the hosted one)
- Manually craft the config file it requires, add it to source
- Create a setup project that's part of your source

And then during the build:
- Build the setup project
- Run adxpublisher with the right config & paths
- Hopefully end up with a folder full of files that you can then deploy, or save as artifacts to use later in the pipeline

I haven't figured out how to do things like update versions - this might require an extra step to modify a couple of files before you build or run adxpublisher. Or perhaps there's a way to generate setup projects from the command line too?

Hope this helps,

Simon
Posted 11 Feb, 2018 23:59:00 Top
Andrei Smolin


Add-in Express team


Posts: 18830
 Joined: 2006-05-11
Thank you Simon!

Hello Jamil,

Does Simon's explanation help?


Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader
Posted 12 Feb, 2018 02:29:51 Top
Jamil Nawaz




Posts: 22
 Joined: 2018-02-10
Hi Andrei / Simon,

Thanks! for the explanation.

I am validating the suggestion with customer according to their requirements. I'll get back to you, if further assistance is required.

Regards,
Jamil
Posted 13 Feb, 2018 02:25:21 Top