MSbuild command line parameter for skipping the directory

Question

I have following command line parameters in team city for deployment. everything works fine but i want to skip some directory while deployment. how can i add that logic in following msbuild script in team city

/P:Configuration=%env.Configuration%
/P:DeployOnBuild=True
/P:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish
/P:MsDeployServiceUrl=https://%env.TargetServer%/MsDeploy.axd
/P:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True
/P:MSDeployPublishMethod=WMSvc
/P:CreatePackageOnPublish=True
/P:SkipExtraFilesOnServer=True
/P:UserName=xxxxx
/P:Password=xxxxx

Answer 1

I was working on the same thing. I didn't like having to modify my .csproj file, so I tried this. It is working for me so far. In my case, I was excluding the media, App_Data\Logs, and App_Data\preview folders from deployment instead of the Data folder.

Basically, you can pass the ExcludeFoldersFromDeployment as a parameter to MSBuild. Combining that with the SkipExtraFilesOnServer does the trick.

/p:Configuration=Debug
/p:DeployOnBuild=True
/p:DeployTarget=MSDeployPublish
/p:MsDeployServiceUrl=OurDevWebServer/msdeployagentservice
/p:AllowUntrustedCertificate=True
/p:MSDeployPublishMethod=RemoteAgent
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=True
/p:DeployIisAppPath=umbraco_TestSite
/p:IgnoreDeployManagedRuntimeVersion=True
/p:SkipExtraFilesOnServer=True
/p:ExcludeFoldersFromDeployment="media;App_Data\Logs;App_Data\preview"
/p:IncludeSetAclProviderOnDestination=False
/p:AuthType=NTML /p:UserName=

Answer 2

You can't specify a WPP skip rule via the command line because they are declared as items, not properties.

Here is the syntax for declaring the skip rule inside your pubxml (or wpp.targets):

<ItemGroup>
  <MsDeploySkipRules Include="SkipErrorLogFolder1"> 
    <SkipAction>Delete</SkipAction> 
    <ObjectName>filePath</ObjectName> 
    <AbsolutePath>ErrorLog</AbsolutePath> 
  </MsDeploySkipRules> 
</ItemGroup>