Building and Deploying Windows Services with VSTS/TFS

Generally windows services are deployed by creating an msi installer. It is possible to deploy msi via VSTS/TFS release management using the extension available in the marketplace. Packaging the windows as non msi would give opportunity to have more control on the configurations etc, when deployment and let’s see how to package a windows service and then get it deployed via VSTS/TFS release management.

Packaging "Assemblies in GAC Installed with SDKs" in Build and Getting Deployed to Target Machine GAC

There can be projects depending on assemblies in Global Assembly Cache installed with may be a internal company SDK, which would even be installed in developer machines and in build servers. These assemblies should be packaged with the project and deployed to the GAC of target machines such as QA,staging and Production etc.  as well. Since the code repo does not include such assemblies in the build server it may be required to extract those assemblies from GAC and packaged with the builds. Let’s see how we can get the assemblies in GAC packaged and get deployed to targets, using VSTS build and release management.

Using NuGet Packages as VSTS Release Artifact Source

If you are used to deploy your solutions with Octopus deploy which a re built with VSTS/TFS, you are used to package your build output as a NuGet package and use it in Octopus. Now you can use the NuGet packages with VSTS release management as well for deployment. For this you have to have the package management feature in VSTS enabled. As VSTS builds and their artifacts are discarded in a configured time period and the maximum time and  number of builds is limited, keeping artifacts as NuGet packages would be useful you to keep your deployed artifacts for a longer period. Let’s explore how to use NuGet packages for deployment in VSTS release management.