Scaffolded Visual Studio Project for SC2025-003 hotfix

The Sitecore team releases hotfixes in between major product releases in order to sneak-in important/minor functionalities. Sometimes the simplest things might go out-of-mind if out-of-sight. So, in those lines, this simple note is to show how to apply a Sitecore hotfix to a Sitecore XM/XP web root. Since Sitecore XC runs on top of an XM/XP instance, the approach is the same - install the hotfix on the CM instance unless the readme file provides any additional information. For instance, in case of SC2025-003, the FAQs section explicitly states that this hotfix must be applied to different roles so, the folders/files must be applied to all these roles by finding the web app related to these roles:

Now, there are multiple ways to install a hotfix and usually the readme file has instructions like,

1. Use Sitecore installation wizard

2. Copy over the files/directories to the web root folder

3. Add an IIS url rewrite rule

While hotfixes like approach-3 are totally out-of-scope for this post, this post is mainly for approach-2. Although you could write a PS script to do the second approach and one of my earlier blog notes covers the PowerShell approach, in this note, I've followed the time-tested approach of deploying/publishing the hotfix files via Visual Studio and I've created this project in 2022. This approach also helps to centralise all your hotfixes within your code/solution structure by storing the artifacts in github.

The latest Sitecore Security bulletin is here for reference.  This has patch files/folders for different Sitecore versions. Now, the easiest approach to add the patch files to your web root is to create a web app project in Visual Studio  and just publish that project. In those lines, I created the web app project so that you can just add this project to your solution and publish what is needed, instead of you setting up this patch/project from scratch and yes, community work is the best work.

So, I already downloaded the zip for Sitecore versions 10-10.4 , unzipped and added the files/folders to my web app project committed to github here. You could follow the same approach for earlier versions like 9.x but use the relevant zip file.

First of all, take a backup of the <webroot>\sitecore\shell\Applications\Dialogs\Upload folder as already stated in the patch readme.

Next, just clone the Github project and setup publish profile pointing to your web root folder. Then, click publish.

Check the showconfig.aspx to find the config files. 

Showconfig.aspx (for reference with patch):

In case if you want to remove the patched files, just manually remove the files added by the patch. Here are the list of files plus, restore the original files related to \sitecore\shell\Applications\Dialogs\Upload folder:

bin folder:

Sitecore.Patch.Support.SC2025-003.dll

Sitecore.Support.628372.dll

SItecore.Support.629358-1.dll

Sitecore.Support.629358-2.dll

Sitecore.Support.PDXP-7886.dll

App_config\include\zzz folder:

Sitecore.Support.628372.config

Sitecore.Support.629358-1.config

Sitecore.Support.629358-2.config

Sitecore.Support.PDXP-7180.config

Sitecore.Support.PDXP-7886.config

\sitecore\shell\Applications\Dialogs\Upload folder:

upload.xml

upload2.aspx

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Github for reference (for 10.x): https://github.com/navancommits/SC2025-003

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Script that deletes the files related to patch (run PowerShell in admin mode):

Adjust the $webRoot variable as need-be since it must point to the web root folder:

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Generic steps:

How to setup/install Sitecore hotfix with Visual Studio?

1. Download the needed hotfix file from Sitecore portal

2. Unzip the hotfix file

3. Open Visual Studio in admin mode

4. Create an Empty Visual Studio .NET sln/project, name the csproj as per hotfix

5. Next, copy the folders/files from unzipped hotfix folder to the .NET project

6. Remember to include the folders/files in the csproj

7. Ensure build is successful else, adjust csproj file to include just the needed dlls/artifacts

8. Create publish profile(s) for the project pointing to the necessary web root folder(s) in other words, topology roles like cm,cd,processing engine etc. as stated in readme

9. Publish the project to necessary web app(s) in other words, topology roles like cm,cd,processing engine etc. as stated in readme

10. Maintain each hotfix as a separate project

Should I maintain each hotfix in a separate project or part of one hotfix project or part of existing web app startup project?

I would say that this is a matter of choice and a standard that a team decides to follow. One disadvantage of maintaining all hotfixes in one project or as part of existing web app startup project is, you might not have separation of concerns but this might seem trivial since hotfix file(s) released by Sitecore has a unique number suffix. On the other hand, maintaining hotfixes in separate projects will help in deployment of only that project/hotfix. If you decide to maintain all hotfixes in one project, you could probably add hotfix details in the readme page apart from adding link to the Sitecore community bulletin page. One major issue of maintaining hotfixes in the web app startup project is, it would mean deployment of the web app and it might not be desirable. In other words, a single project for hotfix is good if everyone agrees in the team and the most importantly, the deployment wouldn't affect the entire application. If you decide to have separate hotfix projects, you should have deployment plan/script to segregate the deployment without affecting the other parts of the web app.