Merge Solutions automatically using devops pipelines or others apps

[RodrigoQuintana]

Hi everyone,

I'm running into the task to deploy the company application to multiple enviroments (qa and prod), we have a "complex" structure, what I can say is the next to give you the better undestanding.

We have multiples solutions and we have our main solution where all of us should put our changes, works like a git repository.
We have some components in other solutions, so... our applications is splited on 2 to 3 solutions, we don't want to export and import manually every single solutions because they could increase in the future.

Is there any way to add a list the solutions we want to merge and then merge into a single solution?

I've seen a video about how to make this possible using XRMToolbox but I'm not sure if we can automate this proccess using this tool

[parvezghumra · Accepted solution]

@RodrigoQuintana 

I assume the solutions you're looking to merge are all unmanaged?

Are you using Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions? If Azure DevOps, which extension are you using for your pipelines?

If Azure DevOps and you're using 'Power DevOps Tool' (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WaelHamze.xrm-ci-framework-build-tasks), you can use the Copy Solution Components task to copy components from one solution to another (ie. the merging you're describing). There might be something similar available in other extensions or even Microsoft's official Power Platform Build Tools extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=microsoft-IsvExpTools.PowerPlatform-BuildTools), but I'm not 100% sure about this.

There's also the 'Add Solution Component' task available in Microsoft Power Platform Build Tools, but I think you would need to explicitly specify which component is to be added for each component. This may not work for your scenario. A similar action is also available in Power Platform GitHub Actions: https://github.com/microsoft/powerplatform-actions/tree/main/add-solution-component

If all else fails you could potentially write your own logic to perform the necessary merge logic using the available SDK, tools, APIs etc

[Sanjay_Ramaling]

Hi , can you share some docs on writing the merge scripts  the requirement is  the below ,

multiple devs would would be working on different components in separate solutions, all their solutions should me merged to main solutions along with components , we want to achieve and implement  this through ci cd Pipeline (azure devops) , 

can you please let us know what would be the ideal approach here , 

[parvezghumra]

@Sanjay_Ramaling 

I would suggest the following approach:

1. Establish, agree and document which are your "main" solutions

2. Install 'Power DevOps Tools' extension into your Azure DevOps extension from here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WaelHamze.xrm-ci-framework-build-tasks. You will need admin privileges for this

3. Create a pipeline in Azure DevOps that will be manually triggered and have 2 input parameters to be set manually: first is the unique name of the source solution, and the second is the unique name of the target solution. If you're intended for only 1 main solution, then the target parameter can be omitted from manual setting and can be set using environment variables/hard-coded instead.

4. The pipeline will 2 tasks: first the 'Power DevOps Tools Installer' and then the 'Copy Solution Components' task to copy components from the source solution to the target solution

5. Optionally you can have a third task to delete the source solution

6. Ideally at the end of this you would want additional tasks to:

a) Increment the solution version number

b) Publish all customisations

c) Export the unmanaged and managed solutions, unpack them and commit them to source control

You will need ensure there is good communication between team members to ensure that no component is included in more than one developer solution and no changes are made directly in the main solutions