Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

Continuous Integration Setup with MSTest

Steven Smith — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:16:01 GMT

I'm working with a client this week to set up Continuous Integration for their development environment.

Some Clarification on VSTS licensing, builds, and Continuous Integration

Bill Blogs in C# — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:45:47 GMT

Jeff Beehler wrote this post clarifying some questions on VSTS licensing as it relates to build environments

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

damonz — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:30:05 GMT

Any idea when the licensing whitepaper will be updated to reflect VS2008 and TFS2008? Things like unit test authoring above obviously have changed between the versions and it would be helpful if the whitepaper were current.

Licensing Team System for your build machine

ASPInsiders — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:38:27 GMT

Licensing is always a fun topic, but if your using Team System and a build server - Jeff Beehler posted

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

briankel — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:43:41 GMT

Damonz - I know that the licensing whitepaper is in the publishing pipeline but as you can imagine due to the reviews required by corporate licensing and lawyers it might take a bit longer to become available! I can tell you however that you're right, since Unit Testing authoring is in Professional Edition then this satisfies the requirement for Team Build (in other words as long as at least one person on your team has VS Pro 2008 or higher then you can utilize Unit Tests as part of your Team Build automation). Note, however, that the code coverage capabilities of unit testing are still reserved for the higher end Team System SKU's so if you intend to utilize code coverage statistics as part of your Team Build then you still need the appropriate Team System SKU (at least one on your team). I hope that helps.

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

Willy-Peter Schaub — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:25:15 GMT

The licensing whitepaper does not clarify what is needed when 99 developers are running Team Edition for Developer and 1 developer runs Team Suite, and installs Team Suite on the build server. Does the build server require a team suite license if features outside of the developer edition are used on the build server?

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

jeffbe — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:47:28 GMT

Willy-Peter,

As far as I can tell, the answer to your question is still the same, no extra license needed for the build machine in your scenario. The *people* that are authoring tests or creating build steps need to have the license for Team Test or Team Suite but the build *machine* does not.

Hope that helps,

jeff

VSTS Links - 03/20/2008

Team System News — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:47:22 GMT

Eugene Zakhareyev on Label scope revealed and Branching to desired target path is easy. The NWCadence...

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

Steve — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:25:01 GMT

One scenario the white paper doesn't cover is a test TFS installation for developing and testing TFS customizations, like process templates, TFS extensibility (SDK), build and deployment scripts, etc. Are there any licensing guidelines for this scenario?

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

jeffbe — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:40:21 GMT

Steve - thank you for your question regarding test TFS installations. You're right that this is not well documented. I've sent that request to our team so that we can add a section covering this scenario. Our recommendation is to use TFS workgroup edition, which comes as part of every Team Edition product and supports up to 5 users / server. This should give you a reasonable place to test out process template changes and other customizations without requiring the purchase of additional licenses.

Thanks again for the question,

Jeff

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

Bill Biddy — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:46:57 GMT

I simply want to use MSTest as my testing framework. I dont want TFS and want to use something else as my build server. However I am getting from my build manager that the build server has to have Studio Installed in order to even run MSTest.exe! So I come tot his site to see if I am responsible for a CAL for the build machine for a product I dont want installed on that machine in the first place. And discover that no, I need TFS licenses for each developer? I hope thats not what you guys have in mind for licensing this scenario? Because if it is, My 30 developers will be directed to switch to NUnit immediately.

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

jeffbe — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:19:35 GMT

Bill - we're looking into simplifying this scenario so that you can use MSTest in this standalone way. Stay tuned for more.

Jeff

How to get up to speed with Team Foundation Server

CodeClimber — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:26:30 GMT

How to get up to speed with Team Foundation Server

re: Licensing Team System editions for your build machine

Mike — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:22:34 GMT

How about in Enterprises where multiple people have permission to access the machine for server maintenance completely unrelated to development and do not have a VS license? What is the best way to ensure that they maintain licensing compliance?