FAQ: Where are all the old and new BRDLite reference templates?
We are frequently getting questions on “where do I find the BRDLite v1 templates referenced in the Build Customization Guide” and“what happened to BRDLite v1+”. In this post I will share the history, changes we made today and a peek into the future to ensure the community has a better understanding on what to find where, and why.
History of BRDLite and the Team Foundation Build Customization Guide
In June 2011 we released the first version of the Team Foundation Build Customization Guide with the primary goal of delivering scenario based and hands-on lab guidance for the customization and deployment of Team Foundation Build. The guide included the first version of the BRDLite build process reference templates, which allowing you to quickly setup a real-world build process in your environment and used as a practical example of the build customization guidance. As shown in the diagram both projects re-used and are therefore dependent on the Community TFS Build Extensions project.
Same graph shown using Robert MacLean Excel wizardry (Creating a timeline chart in Excel 2013):
In February 2012 the Team Foundation Build Customization Guide published their first major update, followed in August with the major v2 release, both of which continued to reference the BRDLite v1 reference templates that were shipped with the v1 release back in June 2011 as BRDLite v2 was delayed.
In February 2013 the BRDLite team released version 2 in their own CodePlex project, BRDLite Reference Templates, leaving BRDLite v1 behind in the Team Foundation Build Customization Guide project, which showed a definite increase of queries in terms of where do I find which template.
Time to act!
Changes made today (2012-March-6)
We added v1 - Visual Studio 2010 download package to the BRDLite Reference Template project:
We dropped the BRDLite v1 templates in the following downloads on Team Foundation Build Customization Guide, also including them in the *Everything.zip package where applicable:
We added a NOTICE on the Team Foundation Build Customization Guide home page that BRDLite has moved to a new home and that discussions and issues relating to BRDLIte should be raised on BRDLite Reference Templates.
Future of BRDLite ad Build Customization Guide
- The BRDLite Reference Templates, Team Foundation Build Customization Guide and Community TFS Build Extensions will continue to have a dependency, as both BRDLite and the Build Customization Guide will use the TFS Build extension building blocks.
- BRDLite Reference Templates will most probably be focused on re-usable build process reference templates in the future, leaning on the other projects for the practical build customization guidance.
- Team Foundation Build Customization Guide will most probably remain focused on practical build customization guidance, leaning on the other projects for extensions and build templates. The hands-on labs and product documentation focused on BRDLite may be removed in future versions.
Hopefully that blows a few of the shrouded dust storms away from these phenomenal projects and solutions.