Artifact questions

[Guest]

1. As far as I understood, when you create Artifact it only packages directory content into a Zip file and moves it into Artifact library? Is that correct?

2. When deploying artifacts, you have a chance of choosing "Deploy as zip file" option. What does that do? Does it just copy a zip file or does it do the same as msdeploy?

3. Is it at all possible to deploy a packaged .NET web application using artifacts?

[Guest]

Hello Vladimir,

1. Yes, that's correct; these artifacts are stored on disk, under the path `Artifacts\AppId\RelNo\BldNo\DepId\ArtifactName.zip

2. The Deploy Artifact action will find the appropriate artifact (Based on Build/Rel No), inspect the contents, and transfer the changed files to the target folder. This option skips the last two steps, and simply deploys the zip file.

3. Maybe? But you may just want to use msbuild with the msdeploy step if you're looking to do that...

[Guest]

[3] – yes; I'm currently doing the following:

1. Create an application package (by using the standard "Package" target in my "Build .NET MSBuild Project" action)
2. Create a BuildMaster build artifact (i.e. create an archive file containing the application package and ancillary files)
3. Deploy the build artifact to a folder on the build server.
4. Run Web Deploy (msdeploy.exe) via a "Execute Command Line" action to deploy the application package (in the folder to which the artifact was deployed in [3]) to the relevant server(s) for the environment.