Improve DSC example usage or provide an example in a CI

[GabLeRoux]

Hey there,
I wanted to give this a try and I was curious to see if this can run on AppVeyor CI for free for open source projects. So I went ahead and created GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc, but I can't figure out how to do it from scratch. I managed to fix a few errors and managed to create a $credential variable from environment variables.

I'm stuck with unity licensing. I do have access to an actual pro license (or at least, a trial pro license I guess), but I keep getting the following error:

BatchMode: Unity has not been activated with a valid License. Could be a new activation or renewal...

as shown in this build:
https://ci.appveyor.com/project/GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc/builds/26168294

I tried passing the serial as a credential object in the Configuration, but I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly. It would also be awesome to use free licenses here, not sure how I can do this tho.

I think this project would get much more adoption if there was a complete example. ✌️ This seems nice btw.

[jwittner]

The README contains an example DSC configuration showing how to use the xUnityLicense DSC Resource to configure a license. That resource is a good guide on how you might use UnitySetup CmdLets directly (which it does) in order to get/set current licenses.

Can you elaborate a little more on what a 'complete' example might include?

[jwittner]

Also, if you feel like having license specific cmdlets, as opposed to using Start-UnityEditor -Serial <serial> please post a comment on the ask for that.

[jwittner]

Btw, I have heard of several cases where people have gotten exactly what you're trying to do to work via UnitySetup. =)

[jwittner]

Reading through the README some more to see what examples we do I have to see one for how to manage Unity Licenses at the bottom of the Cmdlets section.

[jwittner]

I'm closing this given the examples we have, but will reopen if you feel something more would be really helpful. =)

[GabLeRoux]

Thanks for your reply, in fact, I think I only need to know how to pass a license as aPSCredential but my license is a string and I don't know how to do that. Here's how I'm doing it right now:

https://github.com/GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc/blob/736613b/Scripts/ci-windows-install.ps1#L37

Installation seems fine, but according to appveyor log, my license is not ok:

BatchMode: Unity has not been activated with a valid License. Could be a new activation or renewal...
At C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\UnitySetup\5.0.105\UnitySetup.psm1:1036 char:21

I'm not familiar with System.Management.Automation.PSCredential. I think I managed to do something ok with username and password creds:
https://github.com/GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc/blob/736613b/Scripts/ci-windows-install.ps1#L13

But really, I don't know what to use as a key, value pair for the serial, is this good?
https://github.com/GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc/blob/736613b/Scripts/ci-windows-install.ps1#L17

Can you elaborate a little more on what a 'complete' example might include?

The project I created GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc is kind of what I'm looking for. It's an attempt to install and run unity on appveyor to test and build a project using UWP in the cloud as it must run on a windows system. The idea is to have a full example of a unity installation that is able to build and test in the cloud, by only specifying a project path, a license, a username and a password as environment variables.

Concerning #144 there's already a ReturnLicense available, which I feel is probably good enough, requesting a way to support free licenses is probably a different issue.

[jwittner]

Ah, you're running into confusion around a limitation in DSC, which doesn't support the SecureString type. The xUnityLicense DSC resource thus uses a PSCredential to work around this, but it only pulls out the Password and sends it to Start-UnityEditor as the Serial. You can use anything for the user name, but we tend to use 'ignored'.

If you're not leveraging the power of DSC you might find it easier to just make CmdLet calls:

Find-UnitySetupInstaller -Version <version> -Components <components> | Install-UnitySetupInstance
Start-UnityEditor -Credential <userPSCredential> -Serial <serialSecureString>
# Do Stuff with Unity
Start-UnityEditor -ReturnLicense

Regarding free licenses you can use the -ForceFree param of Start-UnityEditor when executing your builds to run in free mode.

Unity cmd line args are documented here.

I'm reopening this with actions to:

• Add a refined version of the above snippet to the README.
• Document the issue with PSCredential/SecureString in DSC.

[jwittner]

Also, the way you are building your secure strings and credentials looks correct at a glance. =)

[jwittner]

Updated my comment above after I realized that we already exposed the -ForceFree functionality. =)

[GabLeRoux]

Awesome, thanks for the tips. I'll give this a try shortly. Using CmdLet calls seems like the way to go. I'll report here once I get things working 👍 Also thanks for the -ForceFree info, makes sens with the Start-UnityEditor, I'll try that too

[GabLeRoux]

Hey good news jwittner,
I managed to get unity to build and call my build script from an installation provided by microsoft/unitysetup.powershell 🎉 I'm not done yet, but turns out it was probably working.

Here's what I learned:
Write-UnityErrors parses .\build.log and actually finds an error inside and shows it in the console, but it's an expected error as the build does happen even if there was an error in the logs! It's important to read .\build.log and not rely only on Write-UnityErrors.

Version              Components Path                               
-------              ---------- ----                               
2018.2.21f1 Windows, Linux, UWP C:\Program Files\Unity-2018.2.21f1\
Write-UnityErrors : Errors were found in .\build.log:
BatchMode: Unity has not been activated with a valid License. Could be a new activation or renewal...
At C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\UnitySetup\5.0.105\UnitySetup.psm1:1036 char:21
+                     Write-UnityErrors $LogFile
+                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,Write-UnityErrors
 
Start-UnityEditor : Unity quit with non-zero exit code: 1
At C:\projects\unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc\Scripts\ci-windows-build.ps1:20 char:1
+ Start-UnityEditor `
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,Start-UnityEditor
 
[...]

So turns out Write-UnityErrors finds errors, but if we keep scrolling, we can actually see it works 👀:tada:

[...]
LICENSE SYSTEM [2019727 3:19:53] License activated successfully with user: ***** 

I guess this happens when it's the first time it runs with a serial, but in the case of a CI, it's going to happen all the time, but poweshell doesn't stop on errors anyway so I guess it's fine. Also, using -forceFree will probably prevent the 'Unity has not been activated with a valid License', will update here once I test this.

ref: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc/builds/26279790?fullLog=true

I still have a few things to fix, but I definitely managed to get things working here. I'll continue in GabLeRoux/unity3d-encrypted-appveyor-poc Thanks again for your help 🤘