Donovan Brown

While giving a webinar on DevOps with Visual Studio Team Services, I was asked if you could build VB6 applications. My response was simple. Visual Studio Team Services can be used to build any language, targeting any platform.  That is true but I wanted to prove it. So in this post I will show you how to build a VB6 application using Visual Studio Team Services. The information here should help you build any language, targeting any platform, with Visual Studio Team Services.

The first thing you will have to do is create a private agent.  Visual Studio Team Services provides hosted build agents running in Azure.  However, VB6 is not installed on those machines.  Therefore, to build VB6 applications you are going to have to create a machine that has VB6 and the Visual Studio Team Services build agent on it.  Whenever I create a build machine I start with a Azure VM using the latest Visual Studio Community template. As of this writing, that was Visual Studio Community 2015 Update 2 with Universal Windows Tools and Azure SDK 2.9 on Windows Server 2012 R2.

Once the machine is provisioned and running in Azure RDP to the machine so we can start installing VB6 and the build agent.  Installing VB6 on Windows Server 2012 R2 is an involved process which I will detail now.

1. Disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration
2. Download Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise ISO from your MSDN subscription
3. Download Visual Basic SP6 from here
4. Right-click the ISO
5. Select Mount
6. Right-click setup.exe from the mounted drive
7. Select Properties
8. Click the Compatibility tab
9. Check the Run this program in compatibility mode for: checkbox
10. Select Windows XP (Service Pack 3)
11. Click Apply
12. Click OK
13. Right-click on setup.exe
14. Select Run as administrator
15. Click Run the program without getting help
16. Click Next
17. Select I accept the agreement
18. Click Next
19. Enter your product ID (download from MSDN)
20. Click Next
21. Click Next
22. Click Run the program without getting help
23. Click Continue
24. Click OK
25. Click Custom
26. Uncheck Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 6.0
27. Click Continue

This is where things get interesting.  This installation will eventually hang updating the system.

Once you reach this point, kill the installation and restart your machine. Once your machine restarts:

1. Right-click the ISO and select Mount
2. Right-click on setup.exe
3. Select Run as administrator
4. Click Run the program without getting help
5. Click Next
6. Select I accept the agreement
7. Click Next
8. Enter your product ID (download from MSDN)
9. Click Next
10. Click Next
11. Click Run the program without getting help
12. Click Continue
13. Click OK
14. Click Custom
15. Uncheck Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 6.0
16. Select Data Access
17. Click Change Options
18. Uncheck everything except Data Environment
19. Click OK
20. Click Continue
    This time the installation should complete as expected.
21. Click Restart Windows

Now we need to install Service Pack 6.

1. Right-click on vb6sp6b.exe
2. Select Properties
3. Click Unblock
4. Click OK
5. Right-click on vb6sp6b.exe
6. Select Run as administrator
7. Enter C:\Users\{user}\Downloads\temp
8. Click OK
9. Click Yes
10. Right-click setupsp6.exe from the C:\Users\{user}\Downloads\temp folder
11. Select Properties
12. Click the Compatibility tab
13. Check the Run this program in compatibility mode for: checkbox
14. Select Windows XP (Service Pack 3)
15. Click Apply
16. Click OK
17. Right-click on setupsp6.exe
18. Select Run as administrator
19. Click Continue
20. Click I Agree
    The installation should complete as expected.

The final step for VB6 is to make sure the installation folder is in the path and VB6 is registered as a capability.

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Right-click the PC node
3. Select Properties
4. Click the Advanced system settings link
5. Click the Environment Variables button
6. Double-click Path  in the System variables list
7. Append ;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98
8. Click OK
9. Click New…
   

   Field	Value
   Variable name	VB6
   Variable value	C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98

10. Click OK
11. Click OK
12. Click OK

To test our installation we will create a “Hello World” program.

1. Press the Windows key
2. Type CMD
3. Press Enter
4. Type vb6
5. Press Enter
   If Visual Basic does not start, repeat the setup to add the installation folder to the path and restart the command window.
6. Select Standard EXE
7. Click Open
8. Change form caption to Hello World!
9. From File menu, select Save Project
10. Create a folder and save your project
11. Close Visual Basic

We need to check this project into Visual Studio Team Services.  I am going to explain how to use Team Foundation Source Control.  If you prefer, you can use Git.  I am just assuming if you are using VB6 you might not have made the move to Git just yet.

1. Log into Visual Studio Team Services
2. Click New

   Field	Value
   Project name	{anything you like}
   Description	{anything you like}
   Process template	{anything you like}
   Version Control	Team Foundation Version Control

3. Click Create project
4. Click Navigate to project
5. Click Add Code

With our team project and Team Foundation Version Control repository created, we can add our code to Visual Studio Team Services.

1. Start Visual Studio 2015
2. Click Team Explorer tab
3. Click Manage Connections
4. Click Connect to Team Project
   
5. Select your server, collection, and project
6. Click Connect
7. Click Configure your workspace
   
8. Click Map & Get
9. Open Source Control Explorer
10. Copy your Hello World project into the mapped folder
11. Click the Add Items to Folder
    
12. Select the folder for your project
13. Click Finish
14. Right-click the new folder
15. Select Check In Pending Changes 
    
16. Click Check In

With Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise installed and our project in Visual Studio Team Services, we can now install the build agent.

1. Return to Visual Studio Team Services
2. Click the Manage project gear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen
   
3. Click your account name
    
4. Click Agent queues tab
5. Click Download agent
6. Save the file to your Downloads folder
7. Right-click agent.zip
8. Select Properties
9. Ensure the file is unblocked
10. Click OK

With the zip downloaded, we can use it to stamp out agents.

1. Right-click agent.zip
2. Select Extract All
3. Enter c:\a1
4. Click Extract

I number my folders because you can have multiple agents installed on a single machine. I tend to install one agent per core.

1. Press the Windows key
2. Type CMD
3. Right-click Command Prompt
4. Select Run as administrator
5. Navigate to the folder where you extracted the file contents
6. Run ConfigureAgent.cmd
   You can either use the default name or have the name match the folder name, which in my case is “a1”
7. Now enter your Visual Studio Team Services URL (https://{account}.visualstudio.com)
8. Press Enter
9. Press Enter
10. Press Enter
11. Sign in to your Visual Studio Team Services account

After you log in, the agent will be configured and begin running.  If you return to your Visual Studio Team Services account, you will see your new agent listed.

1. Select the agent
2. Click Capabilities
3. Confirm the VB6 capability was listed
   

Now to the easy part: creating the build to compile our VB6 application.

1. Click the Build hub
2. Click the green plus 
3. Select the Empty template
4. Click Next
5. Select your repository
6. Check the box for Continuous integration
7. Select Default agent queue
8. Click Create

With the build created, we need to add the required tasks.

1. Click Add build step…
2. Select the Utility category
3. Click Add next to the Command Line task
4. Click Add next to the PowerShell task
5. Click Add next to the Copy and Publish Build Artifacts
6. Click Close 
7. Select the Command Line task 
   

   Field	Value
   Tool	vb6
   Arguments	/m /out errors.txt {project}.vbp
   Working folder	[Browse to folder with {project}.vbp]
   Fail on Standard Error	[Checked]

   
   You must use /out or a dialog will be display on any error and your build will hang.
8. Select the PowerShell task
   

   Field	Value
   Type	Inline Script
   Inline Script	if(Test-Path .\errors.txt) { $file = Get-Content .\errors.txt Remove-Item .\errors.txt if($file | Select-String "succeeded." -quiet) { exit 0 } $file | Where-Object {Write-Host "##vso[task.logissue type=error]$_"} }

9. Select the Copy and Publish Build Artifacts task
   

   Field	Value
   Contents	*.exe
   Artifact Name	drop
   Artifact Type	Server

10. Click Repository tab
11. Update Mappings to project folder
12. Delete cloaked entry
13. Click Trigger tab
14. Update Filters to project folder
15. Click General tab
16. Click Add Demand
    

    Field	Value
    Name	VB6
    Type	exists

    
    This makes sure that only the agent that has Visual Basic 6.0 installed is selected to run this build.
17. Click Save
18. Name build
19. Click OK
20. Click Queue build…
21. Click OK

Once the build is done you can browse the artifact to see the exe produced by the build.

You can use this technique to build any language using Visual Studio Team Services.