Srikanth R : Team Build

SDC Build Tasks

srikanth_r — Sat, 19 May 2007 14:06:00 GMT

The SDC build tasks is now available in CodePlex http://www.codeplex.com/sdctasks

Project Description from the Site :

This is the latest version of the SDC Tasks for .NET 2.0. The SDC Tasks are a collection of MSBuild tasks designed to make your life easier. You can use these tasks in your own MSBuild projects. You can use them stand alone and, if all else fails, you can use them as sample code.
There are over 300 tasks included in this library including tasks for: creating websites, creating application pools, creating ActiveDirectory users, running FxCop, configuring virtual servers, creating zip files, configuring COM+, creating folder shares, installing into the GAC, configuring SQL Server, configuring BizTalk 2004 and BizTalk 2006 etc

Use these taks and save your time in writing these tasks !

Difference between MSBuild and devenv

srikanth_r — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:11:00 GMT

What is the difference between compiling the projects using MSBuild and devenv ?

1. Developers using
a. Devenv ABC.vcproj /Build <Configuration_To_Build>
2. Team Build internally uses:
a. MSBuild ABC.vcproj

Well it depends on what kind of projects you are trying to build. Heres the explanation..

Devenv use msbuild. But MSBuild does not build Visual C++ projects. If msbuild encounters a solution that contains a VC++ project, it calls VCBuild. This is the same behavior as inside DevEnv .

If the projects are using C++, then MSBuild is not called. Devenv uses MSBuild to process solution files. If MSBuild sees a VCProj, it calls VCBuild. If there is a vb.net or C# project, then msbuild handles building the project.

Thanks to Jerel Frauenheim for explaining this with diagram.

Customizing Team Build

srikanth_r — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:07:00 GMT

Sharing this information from Jeff Beehler's Blog

Aaron’s posts on how to extend team build through custom tasks and a custom logger. Writing custom tasks is the primary way folks extend team build to do more complex tasks.

Adding BuildSteps to Team Build through a Custom Task – this post really shows the mechanics of writing a custom task
Adding Custom Loggers to Team Build – this introduces folks to the logger and what it can do – it’s really more of an advanced topic
Determining Whether Tests Passed in Team Build – this is one that came up a number of times on the forums, so it’s a useful thing to show folks
The Triumphant Return? – this post provides a custom task to add any random message as a build step to the build report (one of the messages you see in the build details in VS); a more advanced version of this task ships in the box in Orcas
Building Non-MSBuild Projects With Team Build – quite a few customers need to build stuff that requires running a build tool other than msbuild, such as Ant, Nant, nmake, etc., and Aaron shows the basics of how to get started doing that using a custom task
Orcas: Adding Build Steps to Team Build in orcas – this post explains a bit about the Orcas OM, which is completely new; here, Aaron rewrites the custom build step task using the Orcas OM, so it’s easy to compare the two

General explanation of key v1 API methods

Here are Jason Prickett’s posts on how to filter the build completion event so that folks can control which builds are recorded in WIT for the Found In Build and Resolved In Build fields.

Here are some of my posts.

Team Build Extensibility – points to the v1 extensibility docs in the SDK and lists the targets that are designed to be overridden by customers
Links to MSBuild tasks to extend your build system -- this isn’t team build, but it’s a collection of links for folks to find custom tasks to deploy web sites to IIS, etc.; there’s a lot of good stuff out there
How to run tests in a build without test metadata files and test lists (.vsmdi files) – this has been very popular; in the near future I plan to post a new version with category attribute support written by Pierre Greborio in MSTV
A checkin policy to detect that the build is broken in a CI environment – this is Clark Sells’ checkin policy; we liked it so much, we put such a policy in Orcas
Schema for the WorkspaceMapping.xml file – not enough users understand this and how they can use it to trim down what sources the build gets, labels, and which work items are updated; in this post, I show what the file does, but we still need more documentation here
Generating documentation from code with Team Build – this comes up periodically, and it’s a useful thing to show folks how to do

Wow...I've got some reading ahead of me!

Enjoy!

Custom Build Numbers in Team Build

srikanth_r — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:44:00 GMT

The Team Build service in Team Foundation Server includes the current date in the build number by default. This is really difficult to understand especially when there are lot of builds and you have single team build type for all your environments.

How about having the build numbers some thing like ...

CI_2.5.1
CI_2.5.2
…
CI_2.5.176

In order to do this, we'll customize the Team Build script (TFSBuild.proj) for the project, hooking in to the default Team Build BeforeCompile event. Check TFSBuild.proj out via the Source Control Explorer, and open it for editing. Add these lines to the bottom of the build script

<!-- customized extensibility event BeforeCompile -->
<Target Name="AfterGet" DependsOnTargets="VersionAssemblies">
  <Message Text="AfterGet is firing!"/>
</Target>

<!-- add build number to AssemblyDescription field -->
<Target Name="VersionAssemblies" DependsOnTargets ="GetAssemblyInfos">
  <Attrib Files="@(AssemblyInfos)" ReadOnly="false"/>
  <FileUpdate Files="@(AssemblyInfos)" Regex="AssemblyDescription\(&quot;[^&quot;]*&quot;\)" 
              ReplacementText ="AssemblyDescription(&quot;$(BuildNumber)&quot;)" />
</Target>

<!-- get a list of all AssemblyInfo files -->
<Target Name="GetAssemblyInfos">
  <CreateItem Include ="..\**\AssemblyInfo.cs">
    <Output ItemName ="AssemblyInfos" TaskParameter="Include"/>
  </CreateItem>
  <Message Text="These AssemblyInfo.cs files were found:"/>
  <Message Text ="@(AssemblyInfos)"/>
</Target>

You'll also need to download the MSBuild Community tasks, and install those on your build server. Add a reference to the MSBuild Community tasks near the top of your TFSBuild.proj file, like so:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBuildCommunityTasks\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets" />

Check in the TFSBuild.proj file, then perform a build and you will be seeing the build numbers that is custom generated.

What we're really doing is popping the $(BuildNumber) variable into the AssemblyInfo.cs file. Specifically, we're putting it in the AssemblyDescription field.