mdtool "archive" command in xamarin studio 6

KenYee

FYI, this command no longer does a build and archive.
We were just doing a clean and archive on the build server in Xamarin Studio 5.x and had no problems. Upgraded the build server to the latest and it now needs you to run mdtool w/ the build then archive commands...

Not a bad thing...surprised archive did a build before...this just wasn't documented...

chris_riesgo

Wow. Just now running into this same issue.

Matthew-Robbins

@KenYee You can generate generate archives using the build tasks included in xbuild:

iOS:
xbuild MySolotion.sln /p:Configuration=Ad-Hoc /p:Platform=iPhone /p:BuildIpa=true

Android:
xbuild /t:SignAndroidPackage /p:Configuration=Ad-Hoc Path/To/MyProject.Android.csproj

KenYee

Should we be using xbuild or mdtool for command line builds?
For our project, we've used xbuild for Android and mdtool for iOS.
mdtool operates on the top level project so it seemed more natural to use it...xbuild for Android only takes the lower level Android csproj file instead of a .sln file.

Matthew-Robbins

@KenYee, good question! We've always used xbuild at JobAdder because that was the approach used in the CI documentation: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/ci/teamcity/

For us, xbuild is used for our CI server to create automatic builds for testing. When it comes to publishing the app, we swap to a production configuration and package the apk/ipa using Xamarin Studios internal packaging tools.

KenYee

We do xbuild and mdtool on our CI server and build all our QA/store builds on it. I'll give xbuild a try...seems to make sense to use the same tool, though it's very weird that they take different arguments (csproj vs. sln) on different platforms...

Matthew-Robbins

Yeah, I agree that its weird that projects and slns take different arguments. If you find a cleaner solution using xbuild I'd be interested to hear it.