Vstf build workflow (1) Overview & Preparation

In other words, how do I briefly introduce this topic?

We know that before vstf2010, we used the msbuild command to specifically deploy the project. In addition, what xcopy can be used to copy a deploy project to a specified path, And Wix is used to create the software installation package. Therefore, we need to manually write a lot of commands such as DOS to release our software to the customer.

This is a very tedious task, so manyProgramMembers do not want to do this. Of course, this is not entirely a programmer's business, so some companies have specialized deploy positions, generally recruiting chronic children or girls.

Since the birth of WF 4.0, The vstf project team began to consider using graphs to describe this tedious process. Therefore, they wrote a set of activities and APIs to do these things. Therefore, in the vstf2010 era, we can maintain a sequence activity diagram (default: defaulttemplate. XAML) and describe all the logic in build into simple activities.

So I have this series.

 

First, we need to make some preparations:

1. install and configure vstf

Vstf 2010 has the concepts of controller and agent. In a word, a machine is a controller, and each controller can have multiple agents. The agent is used to build the host, so we can build multiple projects on one machine at the same time without dependency. (This is the simplest statement. For details about this concept, refer to this article.Article: Http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd793166.aspx)

For example, on my vstf:

2. Prepare a clean machine dedicated to build our project. At the same time, because a project is built, the generated installation package must be automatically copied to another network path, so make sure that the build machine has the permission to read and write the network path.

3. Create a winform project and checkin it to vstf. We don't need to write any complicated code, but use this project to show our build workflow. Therefore, the simpler the better.

4. Create a build named jianqiangbuild, specify its drop folder, and select items to build as the winform project we just created, that is, the windowsformsapplication2.sln file.

 

So far, we have created a build. to test whether the build works properly, right-click the build and select queue new build,

If there is no error, the following build success screen is displayed. At the same time, the file (or installation package) generated after build is generated under the specified drop folder)