Aaron Hallberg

Browse by Tags

Writing Custom Activities for TFS Build 2010 (Beta 1)

With TFS Build 2010 (Beta 1) , we've changed the build orchestration language from MSBuild to Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). As such, you now have a new option for adding custom logic to your build proces - custom WF activities. I've gotten Read More...

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 10:49 AM by aaronhallberg | 5 Comments

Filed under: VSTS2010

TargetsNotLogged Hotfix Available

I did a post a while back on a change in TFS Build SP1 which reduced build log noise by cutting out the build steps for project-to-project references (of the form "Project 'project' is building project 'dependent project' for target(s) 'GetNativePath'", Read More...

Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 11:14 AM by aaronhallberg | 8 Comments

Calling Custom Targets in Team Build, Part 3

I've done a couple of posts now on calling custom targets during a Team Build build - this one focused on calling custom targets in the solution/project being built, and this one focused on calling custom targets in your TfsBuild.proj file itself before/after Read More...

Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 4:13 PM by aaronhallberg | 3 Comments

The CompilationOutputs Item Group

I've mentioned the CompilationOutputs item group we added in TFS 2008 before in passing (see this post , for example), but never given it the attention it deserves... This item group is built up over the course of the Compile / CompileConfiguration Read More...

Posted Friday, August 08, 2008 1:49 PM by aaronhallberg | 3 Comments

A Minimal TFSBuild.Proj File

A fair number of people seem to want to use Team Build to kick off their own pre-existing build scripts that have nothing in common with the process defined in Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets. While we don't typically encourage this, enough Read More...

Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 10:31 AM by aaronhallberg | 3 Comments

Associating changesets and Work Items Since the Last Successful Build

We got a forum post the other day on whether changesets and work items could be associated since the last Successful build. Some of you may be thinking "Isn't that how it already works?" Actually, it's not quite how it works. Read More...

Posted Wednesday, July 16, 2008 9:40 AM by aaronhallberg | 2 Comments

Attaching Custom Data to a Build

In Orcas, we introduced a generic information storage for builds - internally this is used for all build steps, associated changesets/workitems, etc. You can use it to attach arbitrary data to a build (and later retrieve it). Here are a couple Read More...

Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 8:11 AM by aaronhallberg | 2 Comments

Orcas RTM Object Model Documentation

The official Orcas RTM OM documentation was posted a while ago, and I neglected to blog about it! It's available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6466b53d-d80b-4c31-8f5c-dfb5d32e9411&DisplayLang=en . Make Read More...

Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 7:55 AM by aaronhallberg | 0 Comments

Tech*Ed 2008

If you are planning on attending Tech*Ed Developers in sunny Orlando this year, I'll be manning the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server (Version Control and Build) demo station (quite the name, eh?) for about 22 hours over the course Read More...

Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 9:37 AM by aaronhallberg | 1 Comments

Orcas SP1 TFS Build Changes, Part 2

As promised, here are some more details on other SP1 changes for TFS Build. 3. Detect test results. In Whidbey, a failed test would result in a failed build - builds were either Succeeded or Failed, so there wasn't really much middle ground. Read More...

Posted Monday, May 12, 2008 9:18 AM by aaronhallberg | 3 Comments

Orcas SP1 TFS Build Changes

Brian Harry put up a post on the improvements that will be available in the upcoming Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 release. Here's some more in depth info on two of the TFS Build changes: 1. Conditionalize builds on the trigger. There are actually a Read More...

Posted Monday, May 05, 2008 9:16 AM by aaronhallberg | 9 Comments

Solution-Specific Output Directories in Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas)

In an earlier post I described how one can, in Orcas, preserve the output directory structure used in a standard IDE or desktop build. It seems that many people are looking for a simple approach, however, to augmenting the standard Team Build output directory Read More...

Posted Monday, April 28, 2008 8:49 AM by aaronhallberg | 3 Comments

Overriding the ToolsVersion for Your Projects in Team Build

Recently I got a question about how to compile projects against multiple .NET Frameworks (e.g. 2.0 and 3.5) in Team Build. MSBuild added support for this sort of thing in the 3.5 framework (they call it multi-targeting), but it is not particularly easy Read More...

Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:48 AM by aaronhallberg | 1 Comments

Modifying the ConfigurationFolderPath RecursionType in Team Build 2008

In TFS 2008, TfsBuild.proj files can be located anywhere in source control, not just in $/TeamProject/TeamBuildTypes, as was required in TFS 2005. As a result, we changed the default recursion type used to download files from the configuration folder Read More...

Posted Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:20 PM by aaronhallberg | 9 Comments

Team Build 2008 Property Reference

There are lots and lots of MSBuild properties available to Team Build 2008 build definitions, most of which are probably unknown to the majority of users. As such, I've tried to compile a comprehensive list of these properties so that they can (hopefully) Read More...

Posted Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:04 AM by aaronhallberg | 12 Comments