Team System:team Build 2008

Team Foundation Server (TFS) is essentially teams-oriented. Of course, a team of people can use it, but TFS is actually a collaboration with other people in the development project.

Building automation is no longer just pressing F5. Building automation involves collection, compilation, validation, and auditing. The gist is to collect all the products that make up the solution and then assemble the products according to a well-defined integration plan. Compilation is a typical task that is defined during the assembly phase. You can use a variety of automated tests (typically using build validation tests (BVT) or smoke tests) to validate team work.

Finally, you need to perform certain types of audits to assess the overall quality of the build. The data provided by the audit process can help you answer a variety of difficult questions. For example, will the capabilities of this build create a product? Does the product have high quality? Is there a certain retrogression? Do you do the work on schedule? The value of building audits is to make it easy for you to master the work of your team.

In this column, I'll introduce you to the Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server build, and take you through the process of creating and running team builds. I'll also show you the managed APIs that are currently available for you to program against Team Build 2008.

About Team Builds

Team Build is the core feature of TFS 2008. Microsoft is designed to build automation tools that are strong in the industry. It can be said that it provides a F5 experience for your team. In a typical environment, you will install the team build on its dedicated server (if your group is very small or budget-intensive, you can install the teams build on TFS).

The 2008 build is a large update, unlike the rest of TFS. In version 2005, Microsoft built an excellent build automation product. Team Build 2005 leverages Ms-build as its engine, supporting multiple core automation features that you expect: versioning, compilation, multiple build types, unit testing, static analysis, and code coverage.

In addition, it provides excellent reporting capabilities, including building reports and data updates to the TFS data Warehouse to support historical trend analysis. The 2005 build also supports building more computers, building notifications, and starting builds from the command line or through the Team Explorer user interface.

Microsoft has made deeper improvements in Team Build 2008. Major enhancements include continuous integration support, build queues, schedule builds through Team Explorer, and managed object models. In addition, Microsoft separates the build agent definition from the build definition, creates a build definition editing user interface, and adds more efficient build management tools.

Combined with the robust Team Build 2005 feature set, Team builds 2008 presents a compelling building automation solution. In addition, because Microsoft continues to support backward compatibility, you can upgrade the TFS installation and the Team build server even if the development teams are still using Visual Studio 2005.