Using MSBuild to deploy a website cross-domain

The task: to have an automated build process which would take the fresh built files and deploy them on a remote web server.

The challenge: the remote web server was not in the same domain as the machine with Team Build on it.

Initial research found plenty of helpful advice on how to do a copy using the <Copy> task. I tried various different methods of specifying the files I wanted to copy but all hit the same trouble. I tried adding on some community extensions to MSBuild to FTP Copy but didn’t get far with that as it seemed to want to transfer only one file at a time.

In the end, our Operations Team came up with the answer in the form of a Trust Relationship between the two domains in question. Now, my share was browsable without needing to enter remote domain credentials.

So the Target I wrote overwrites the behaviour of the ‘AfterDropBuild’ target and looks something like this:

<Target Name="AfterDropBuild">

<CreateItem Include="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Release\_PublishedWebsites\PROJECT\**\*.*">

<Output ItemName="ItemsToDeploy" TaskParameter="Include"/>

</CreateItem>

<Message Text="Found items: @(ItemsToDeploy,'%0d%0a')" Importance="high"/>

<Copy SourceFiles="@(ItemsToDeploy)" DestinationFiles="@(ItemsToDeploy->'\\REMOTESERVERIP\PROJECTDROPSHARE\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
</Target>