How to build and deploy to Windows Azure using Powershell and Hudson?

Question

I am looking at getting a continuous integration/continuous deployment environment set up for my windows azure project and I was wondering if anyone had managed to (can point me in the right direction to) build and deploy a windows azure cloud service using powershell and Hudson and perhaps has sample scripts.

I can get the project to build using MSBuild64 (I'm running x64 Windows 2008 R2 Standard). I know 32 bit development works, but assume 64 bit development is better as i understand it as problems will be ironed out on my local box as opposed to once deployed in the Azure environment which i believe is 64 bit. (Please feel free to correct my thinking here)

I assume i have to get the cspack.exe file to package the deployment first as in a manual deployment via the development portal.

Ideally i would like to deploy it locally (with the development simulation) run unit tests against it (perhaps against cloud storage for integration tests), deploy it to staging (run the acceptance/bdd) tests and then switch from staging to production.

Any help with anyones experience in this which will speed this research up for me would be appreciated

Many Thanks Mark

Answer 1

This may help to get you started: http://blog.smarx.com/posts/building-running-and-packaging-windows-azure-applications-from-the-command-line

Also see http://scottdensmore.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/windows-azure-deployment-for-your-build-server-part-2-deploy-certs.html.

Answer 2

Mark, I am looking at something similar. The best solution at this point appears to be a custom solution that uses the REST APIs.

Erick