Hello World On Windows

This document describes how to get started with continuous integration on Windows execution environments on CircleCI. If this is your first time setting up CircleCI, we recommend checking out the Getting Started guide.

To follow along with this document you will need:

• An account on CircleCI.
• Either the Free, Performance, or Scale Plan.

Let us consider a more advanced (but still introductory) “hello world” application using the Windows executor. This example application still prints “Hello World” to the console, but does so using .NET core to create an executable, uses dependency caching, and creates an artifact on every build.

You can view the entire configuration here. It also includes browser and UI testing, but we will focus on the hello-world workflow for now.

version: 2.1

Above, we start by declaring that we will use version 2.1 of CircleCI, giving us access to Orbs and Pipelines.

orbs:
  win: circleci/windows@4.1.1

Next, we declare orbs that we will be using in our build. We will only use the Windows orb to help us get started. This example uses the 2.4.0 version of the orb, but you may consider using a more recent version.

workflows:
  hello-world:
    jobs:
      - build

We define a hello-world workflow, in which we run a single job named build.

jobs:
  build:
    executor:
      name: win/default

Under the jobs key, we define the build job, and set the executor via the orb we are using.

    steps:
      - checkout

In our first step, we run the checkout command to pull our source code from our version control system.

      - restore_cache:
          keys:
      - run:
          name: "Install project dependencies"
          command: dotnet.exe restore
      - save_cache:
          paths:
            - C:\Users\circleci\.nuget\packages

Next in the config, we make use of caching to restore cached dependencies from previous builds. The command dotnet restore will fetch any dependencies that are not already installed/restored from the cache. Learn more about caching in our caching document.

      - run:
          name: "Run Build step"
          command: dotnet.exe publish -c Release -r win10-x64
      - run:
          name: "Test the executable"
          command: .\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1\win10-x64\publish\circleci-demo-windows.exe

Next, we run two steps: one to build the executable for Windows 10, and another to test the executable (expecting to see “Hello World” printed to the console).

      - store_artifacts:
          path: .\bin\Release\netcoreapp2.1\win10-x64\publish\circleci-demo-windows.exe

In our last step, we store the build executable as an artifact, making it accessible with the CircleCI web application or API.

Consider reading documentation on some of CircleCI’s features:

• See the Concepts document for a summary of configuration and the hierarchy of top-level keys in a .circleci/config.yml file.
• Refer to the Workflows document for examples of orchestrating job runs with concurrent, sequential, scheduled, and manual approval workflows.
• Find complete reference information for all keys and pre-built Docker images in the Configuring CircleCI and CircleCI Images documentation, respectively.