Changing default build worker image to Visual Studio 2015

Visual Studio 2015 was released more than a year ago, time proven on AppVeyor OSS environment and Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 was even released already. More and more customers use Visual Studio 2015 for their new projects and migrating existing projects into it. We at AppVeyor also use Visual Studio 2015 and find it very stable and mature enough to be installed on default build worker image.

Right now default build worker image has only Visual Studio 2013 installed and you have to wait if your project targets Visual Studio 2015 (Visual Studio 2015 is selected in “Build worker image” field of project settings or “os: Visual Studio 2015” added to appveyor.yml).

We are going to change default image to “Visual Studio 2015” for all existing accounts on Friday, March 18th, 2016.

After this change customers having “Visual Studio 2013” in “Build worker image” field on Environment tab of project settings (or “os:” setting in appveyor.yml does not contain “Visual Studio 2015” value, or no “os:” setting at all) will see some queue time increase between 1-2 minutes. This time is required to re-create and re-boot build worker VM with non-default image.

You may need to do a few easy steps below to fix that.

What to do?

Update build worker image to “Visual Studio 2015”

On “Environment” tab of project settings select “Visual Studio 2015” in “Build worker image” dropdown or if you configure your project through appveyor.yml add the following line to the config:

image: Visual Studio 2015

Even if your project targets Visual Studio 2013 or earlier you should still do this step because default image has both Visual Studio 2013 and Visual Studio 2015 installed.

Update path to msbuild.exe

Visual Studio 2015 comes with .NET 4.6.1 and MSBuild 14.0 which are upgrades to .NET 4.0 and MSBuild 12.0 respectively.

If your build calls msbuild.exe without specifying its full path and strongly depends on MSBuild 12.0 you may need to adjust PATH environment variable as “Visual Studio 2015” image has MSBuild 14.0 in PATH.

To change MSBuild path to MSBuild 12.0 add the following line to “Install” section of your project configuration:

for “CMD” mode:

set PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin;%PATH%

for “PS” mode:

$env:PATH="C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin;$env:PATH"

or add this command in install section of appveyor.yml:

install:
  - set PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin;%PATH%

Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this move please let us know by replying to this email or submitting a new issue on our forums.

Windows images update on February 28, 2016

What’s new

  • #635 Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 SP2
  • #641 Node.js 0.10.41-42, 0.12.8-10, 4.3.0, 4.3.1, 5.6.0
  • #649 Azure SDK 2.8.2.1
  • #652 Fixed: “Bad file descriptor” while redirecting StdIn in bash script
  • #653 Fixed: NUnit3 results parser issues
  • #657 Fixed: Environment variables set on before_deploy are not affect deployment providers
  • #658 Windows Management Framework 5.0 RTM (WMF5 image)
  • #659 Desktop Experience Windows feature (GCE environment)

Previous worker images

There are build worker images available from previous deployment. You can use them in case of any issues with the current images:

  • Previous Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Previous Visual Studio 2015

You can select build worker image in OS dropdown on Environment tab of project settings or if you use appveyor.yml:

os: Previous Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows images update on February 7, 2016

What’s new

  • #403 Permalinks for “latest result” artifacts
  • #418 Generic “appveyor-retry” script
  • #628 Fixed: Slack incoming_webhook notification doesn’t work if incoming_webhook uses secure
  • #629 Increase artifacts upload timeout
  • #630 Overwriting of artifacts
  • #631 LLVM 3.7.1
  • #632 Ruby 2.2.4, 2.1.8 and 2.0.0-p648
  • #634 Disable Chrome autocomplete on deployment and notification settings
  • #637 MSYS 2 update - Feb 7

Previous worker images

There are build worker images available from previous deployment. You can use them in case of any issues with the current images:

  • Previous Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Previous Visual Studio 2015

You can select build worker image in OS dropdown on Environment tab of project settings or if you use appveyor.yml:

os: Previous Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows images update on January 31, 2016

Slack notification breaking changes

There was a bug in Slack notification provider when AppVeyor was always prepending channel name with # and preventing sending notifications to private channels. Now, when that bug is fixed and AppVeyor is not adding # to a channel name anymore you may need to update your Slack notification settings to make sure public channel name starts with #. In appveyor.yml you need to quote channel name to pass YAML validation, for example:

- provider: Slack
  auth_token:
    secure: AAABBB+CCC==
  channel: '#channel'

What’s new

  • #14 Deployment notifications New!
  • #250 BinTray deployment New!
  • #277 Azure Web Jobs deployment New!
  • #305 Lock / Limit environments to a projects New!
  • #437 Deployment history New!
  • #473 Optimize “New deployment” page for projects with large history
  • #508 Deployment environment permissions New!
  • #597 Environment update: Update MSYS 2
  • #612 Environment update: Node.js 4.2.5, 4.2.6, 5.4.0, 5.4.1, 5.5.0
  • #616 Update default SymbolSource server URL
  • #617 Add “before_package” build step
  • #619 Environment update: Git LFS 1.1
  • #620 Environment update: Git 2.7.0
  • #621 Environment update: Re-install Cygwin
  • #622 Force re-starting ASP.NET app on deploy
  • #623 Fixed: Slack notifications fails on private channel
  • #624 Environment update: TypeScript 1.7.6.0

Previous worker images

There are build worker images available from previous deployment. You can use them in case of any issues with the current images:

  • Previous Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Previous Visual Studio 2015

You can select build worker image in OS dropdown on Environment tab of project settings or if you use appveyor.yml:

os: Previous Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows images update on January 2, 2016

What’s new

  • #573 WDK 8
  • #575 Re-map .py extension to py.exe
  • #576 OpenSSL 64-bit
  • #577 Special symbols in Slack notifications issue
  • #578 NuGet 2.8.60717.93
  • #586 An option to clone GitHub private repos via HTTPS
  • #588 Repaired Windows 10 SDK to support WACK (appcert.exe)
  • #589 WDK 10
  • #590 Silverlight 5 runtime on Visual Studio 2015 image
  • #591 Node.js 4.2.4

Previous worker images

There are build worker images available from previous deployment. You can use them in case of any issues with the current images:

  • Previous Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Previous Visual Studio 2015

You can select build worker image in OS dropdown on Environment tab of project settings or if you use appveyor.yml:

os: Previous Windows Server 2012 R2