Team Build Customization Guide – New Rangers project, codename African Tawny Eagle (ATE)

We have just announced the latest Visual Studio ALM Rangers project, which was voted #4 by the Rangers and MVPs.

… “Rosie” the African Tawny Eagle … the project codename.

Abstract

This Ranger project has the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on guidance for the customization and deployment of TFS Builds activities such as versioning, code signing, branching.

Some “rough” Backlog ideas

The following “rough”, “unedited” and unsorted list shows some of the “considered” aspects of this project. The final product backlog will be shared once the team has been formed, the scope and backlog discussed and groomed.

  • Some examples
  • Scenarios
    • Take a multi-tier app, maybe Windows App with ClickOnce, A Web Site, a WCF Service and a database
    • You want to build this, deploy it, and then test. You want to be able to get associate the dll assembly version with a label in version control
    • You might have an existing msbuild task you want to leverage
    • Non-Microsoft development environment
  • Stuff to be covered
    • Creating a custom activity
    • Using old msbuild tasks in WF based workflow
    • Using MS Deploy to deploy web site
    • Versioning assemblies
    • Deploying a db via Team Build
    • Using ClickOnce in a build environment
    • Maintaining config settings (web.config,app.config) between different environments (dev/testing/staging etc)
    • Deploying a build to different environments – part of one build or define multiple. Example say you want to deploy
    • Integration of testing (with and without Lab Manager). For example how do you execute automated tests from team build.
    • Potentially cover going from test to production (aka things like Team Deploy)
  • Other considerations
    • Workflow-Based Build Guidance
    • Build automation (BRD light)
    • Build, Release and Deploy On Demand
    • Testing in a “physical” environment
    • Team Build Uplift – From TFS2008 to TFS2010
    • Guidance around Using TFS to do Cross Platform development

Give me a shout if you have any questions and send us your “candid” feedback as always :)