August 2019 Summaries

Derek Campbell announced that Octopus will be participating in WinOps London on September 23-24, 2019, where he will lead a DevOps workshop and present a talk on enhancing Azure DevOps deployments with Octopus. The workshop, scheduled for September 23, will focus on CI/CD core concepts, best practices, and solving real-world release management and automation challenges, offering hands-on experience with TeamCity, Octopus Cloud, and a sample application called OctoFX. Participants will need a laptop, VS Code or Visual Studio 2017+, and a modern web browser. On September 24, Campbell will deliver a presentation on integrating Azure DevOps with Octopus Deploy, demonstrating an Azure pipeline that transitions from build and test to production. Attendees are encouraged to meet the Octopus team and collect Octopus stickers during the event.

GitHub Actions, in its beta phase, introduces a powerful feature allowing users to execute builds and deployments directly from their code, although it lacks a build number system typically found in CI environments. Matthew Casperson discusses using GitVersion, a tool that generates semantic version numbers from Git tags, as a solution to this limitation, by leveraging the Git repository as the versioning source without additional tools. The text explains using the shared filesystem in GitHub Actions to pass version information between jobs, addressing the challenge of capturing job outputs for subsequent use. The example provided details a workflow for building a Python AWS Lambda application, demonstrating how to integrate GitVersion with Octopus CLI tools to manage application packaging and deployment. Despite some initial hurdles in the beta release, such as the absence of variable passing between jobs, the integration of these tools showcases the flexibility and potential of GitHub Actions in enhancing CI/CD processes.

Octopus Deploy 2019.8 introduces several enhancements primarily driven by user requests, with the most notable update being an improved deployment process editor that enhances visibility and usability by allowing users to see the entire process while editing a step. This release also includes the ability to clone tenants, offering a more efficient way to create and configure new tenants, and expands health check scheduling options to allow the use of cron expressions or the option to disable checks. Additionally, users can now override the namespace in all Kubernetes step types and include Deploy Release steps in rolling deployments. New variable filter expressions have been added to facilitate better manipulation of variable values, and the process of adding certificates has been streamlined by enabling direct pasting into the portal. The 2019.8 release is a fast lane update without long-term support, with features set to be included in the next long-term support release at the end of Q3 2019, while Octopus Cloud customers will receive updates during their maintenance window.

Bob Walker's article discusses the advantages of using Chocolatey, a package manager for Windows, to streamline the setup of developer machines. Reflecting on the past process of manually installing applications and frameworks, Walker highlights how Chocolatey simplifies this by allowing users to automate the installation and updating of software packages and their dependencies through scriptable commands. The article contrasts Chocolatey's lightweight and flexible approach with traditional methods like creating developer images or using heavy-handed tools like SCCM, which can be cumbersome and outdated. Walker provides examples of using PowerShell scripts to install various applications, demonstrating how Chocolatey can be customized to meet the specific needs of different teams or environments. He also emphasizes the potential for using Chocolatey in server setups, and concludes by noting the time-saving benefits he has personally experienced, as well as the ease of keeping software up to date with this tool.

Bob Walker describes his experience implementing an automated system for installing SQL Server Developer at a company, using PowerShell to streamline the process for over 100 developers. Initially opting for a dedicated database model requiring each developer to install SQL Server Developer on their laptops, Walker found that manual installation through a GUI was impractical for large teams. Instead, he developed a method to automate the setup using a configuration file created via the GUI, which was then modified for command-line installation. This approach involved altering the ConfigurationFile.ini file to enable features like TCP/IP and Mixed Mode Authentication, and scripting the process with PowerShell to handle tasks such as mounting the ISO image and running the installer. Despite encountering challenges with different developer environments, the effort resulted in a standardized, efficient installation process that significantly reduced onboarding time for new team members. Lessons learned included managing expectations and acknowledging that some unique setups might still require manual intervention, but overall the initiative succeeded in improving deployment efficiency across the organization.

The article explores a method for verifying application settings stored in a .NET Core appSettings.json file, emphasizing the importance of ensuring consistency across different environment-specific configuration files such as appSettings.Development.json. It introduces a PowerShell function designed to recursively traverse JSON file keys, compare entries between main and environmental files, and identify discrepancies. The function, combined with an array to specify settings to ignore, can detect missing settings in the main appsettings.json file, preventing incomplete deployments. Additionally, the approach ensures that all JSON configuration settings have corresponding Octopus Deploy variables, thereby enhancing deployment reliability by alerting users to any missing values. The article concludes by acknowledging that while the solution may not cover every scenario, it provides a foundational approach to safeguarding against deployment errors.