Implementation of CI/CD in .NET application Using Shell Executor on GitLab
Last Updated : 30 May, 2024
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) have revolutionized software development, allowing teams to automate build, test, and deployment processes for rapid and reliable software delivery. In the .NET ecosystem, implementing CI/CD pipelines is important for maintaining code quality, improving collaboration, and accelerating time-to-market.
GitLab, a popular DevOps platform, offers powerful CI/CD capabilities, including the versatile Shell Executor, which enables seamless automation of tasks within CI/CD pipelines. In this article, we'll explore how to implement CI/CD for a .NET application using GitLab's Shell Executor, empowering you to streamline your development workflow and enhance productivity.
Understanding CI/CD with GitLab:
Before diving into implementation details, let's briefly review the concepts of CI/CD and how GitLab facilitates their implementation:
- Continuous Integration (CI): CI involves automatically building and testing code changes whenever they are pushed to a shared repository.
- Continuous Deployment (CD): CD extends CI by automating the deployment of code changes to production or other target environments.
- GitLab Shell Executor: The Shell Executor is one of GitLab's available executors for running CI/CD jobs. It executes commands directly on the CI runner's host machine, providing flexibility and control over the execution environment.
Requirements
Software | Description |
|---|
| Git | This is the first requirements, to commit the changes on GitLab. It is a version control software that tracks the changing set of files. |
| GitLab Runner | The work of the GitLab Runner is to pick up and execute the job (when a new commit happens). |
| MSBuild.exe | Download MSBuild.exe and save it in your local directory, It helps to build the project when GitLab Runner pick up the job. If in a machine, Visual Studio is already installed then It will not be needed to install. It can be found C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe (find based on Visual Studio version) |
| Nuget.exe | Download Nuget.exe and save it, in the same directory where MSBuild is available. |
Path Configuration
Software/File | Path Description |
|---|
| Git | After Successfully installation of Git on the machine. The below path needs to set to communicate with GitLab repository. Go to System Environment Variable, add these two with User Variable path - C:\Program Files\Git
- C:\Program Files\Git\bin
|
| MSBuild.exe | MSBuild.exe path will be needed in Yml file, while configuration with GitLab. For Example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe or where your MSBuild is available. |
| Nuget.exe | Nuget.exe path will also be needed in Yml file, while configuration with GitLab. For Example, C:\Tools\Nuget\nuget.exe or where your Nuget is available. |
| Mstest.exe | This is useful to run the test cases of .Net,in Visual Studio 2019, it is available in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\mstest.exe |
| .gitlab-ci.yml | This file should be inside the root directory of the project which contains all the CI/CD configuration including software and script path. Here, you can mention how this repository should run. Before adding this file to the root directory, should check it is a valid yml file or not. |
GitLab Runner Set Up
Follow the below steps to download and configure the GitLab Runner.
1. Download GitLab Runner for Windows
2. After downloading successfully, save it in your directory (For ex: C:\Tools\GitLab-Runner), and rename it with the following command
gitlab-runner.exe
3. Open Command Prompt on Admin Mode, go to GitLab-Runner directory and check the status of it using
gitlab-runner status
4. If it is already running, stop it before registering a repository with GitLab Runner
gitlab-runner.exe stop
5. Once GitLab Runner has successfully stopped then use the following command for the repository registration
gitlab-runner.exe register
6. When you do repository registration with GitLab Runner, the below questions have to answer.
- Enter your GitLab instance URL: It can be different with each organization and format will be like http://gitlab.example.com
- Path: Go to GitLab Account → Select repository which you want to register with runner → Settings → CI/CD → Expand Runner
- Enter the gitlab-ci token for this runner: It will be a unique token of each project which will need while registration and it can be found
- Path: Go to GitLab Account → Select repository which you want to register with runner → Settings → CI/CD → Expand Runner
- Enter the gitlab-ci description for this runner: Put Runner name(any name), which will help you to remember that which runner' is running
- Enter the gitlab-ci tags for this runner: It is an optional, if you want to start GitLab runner when specific tag is available in yml file.
- Enter the executor: There will be list of several executors, and type shell(as GitLab Runner will run our system)
7. After successful registration, start the GitLab Runner
gitlab-runner start
8. To verify that GitLab Runner has registered the respective repository and the runner has been started. Go to GitLab Account → Select repository which you want to register with runner → Settings → CI/CD → Expand Runner, There will be a green color circle will be available, and displaying message will be Runners activated for this project.
Note: If the circle is gray, it means the runner has not started and starts again.
Windows GitLab Runner Command
| Command | Description |
|---|
| gitlab-runner.exe register | Register the project with GitLab Runner |
| gitlab-runner.exe start | Start the runner |
| gitlab-runner.exe stop | Stop the runner |
| gitlab-runner.exe status | To know the status of gitlab-runner |
| gitlab-runner unregister --name test-runner | Unregister Runner of a project and replace the test-runner with your runner name and this name can be found inside the config.toml file (where your gitlab.exe) available. |
| gitlab-runner unregister --url http://gitlab.example.com/ --token t0k3n | Remove Runner by URL and token |
| gitlab-runner unregister --all-runners | Unregister All Runners |
| gitlab-runner restart | This command stops and then starts the GitLab Runner service |
| gitlab-runner uninstall | This command stops and uninstalls the GitLab Runner from being run as a service |
| gitlab-runner exec | To see a list of available executors, run |
| gitlab-runner --help | Check a recent list of commands by executing |
| gitlab-runner run --help | Can see the name of the environment variable |
| gitlab-runner --debug | To run a command in debug mode |
| gitlab-runner exec shell | To see a list of all available options for the shell executor, run |
.gitlab-ci.yml: This is a format of .gitlab-ci.yml and changes it based on requirements
variables:
NUGET_PATH: 'C:\Tools\Nuget\nuget.exe'
MSBUILD_PATH: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe'
MSTEST_PATH: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\mstest.exe'
TEST_FOLDER: '.\test\bin\Release'
stages:
- build
- test
- deploy
before_script:
- '& "$env:NUGET_PATH" restore sourcecode\project.sln' # sourcecode\project.sln-This path includes project solution where is available and restoring
- '& "$env:NUGET_PATH" restore test\test.sln' # This path includes test solution where is available. and restoring
build_job:
stage: build
only:
- developer #this branch will run on GitLab Runner and can change it.
script:
- '& "$env:MSBUILD_PATH" sourcecode\project.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform="Any CPU" /P:PublishProfile=FolderProfile.pubxml'
- '& "$env:MSBUILD_PATH" test\test.sln /p:DeployOnBuild=true /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform="Any CPU" /P:PublishProfile=FolderProfile.pubxml'
artifacts:
expire_in: 365 days #artifcats will be stored only 365 days after this it will expire
paths:
- '.\sourcecode\project.sln\bin\Release\Publish\'
- '.\sourcecode\project.sln\bin\Publish\'
- '$env:TEST_FOLDER'
- '.\$env:MSTEST_PATH\*.*'
test_job:
stage: test
only:
- developer #this branch will run on GitLab Runner and can change it.
script:
- .\test\test.bat #This is bat file, if the test are written in script format
dependencies:
- build_job
deploy_job:
stage: deploy
only:
- developer #this branch will run on GitLab Runner and can change it.
script:
- 'xcopy /y /s ".\sourcecode\project.sln\bin\Release\Publish\*.*" "C:\solutionDir"' #Path where you want to store the solution
dependencies: #after successfully build, only test stage will run
- build_job
- test_job
Code Commit: After successful configuration, do commit and see the job status on GitLab. Go to Project repository → Select CI/CD menu