Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

Strategy
• Use a scheduled build to produce regular builds.
• Use CI build to get rapid feedback on check-ins.
• Use a rolling build if CI builds are adversely impacting build server
performance.
• Use branching to reduce build breaks.
• Use check-in policies to improve check-in quality.
• Use build notification alerts to learn when the build has completed.
Use a Scheduled Build to Produce Regular Builds
Use a scheduled build to produce builds at regular, predictable intervals.
Generally, builds provided to your test team and to others need to be reliable and should
be made available at a fixed time frequency, so that feedback on the build can be
collected in a timely fashion.
The Team Build feature in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server
(TFS) does not support scheduled builds from the user interface. Instead, you can use the
Microsoft Windows® Task Scheduler to run the TFSBuild command-line utility to start
builds at a predetermined time.
To create a scheduled build
1. Create a TFSBuild command line as follows:
TfsBuild start
2. Place the command line in a batch file.
3. Create a Windows Scheduled Task that runs the batch file at your desired interval.
Additional Resources
• For more information about setting up scheduled builds with Team Build, see
“Chapter 9: Setting Up a Scheduled Build with Team Build” in this guide.
• For more information about setting up scheduled build with TFS, see “How To – Set
Up a Scheduled Build in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server” in this guide.
Use a Continuous Integration Build to Get Rapid Feedback on Check-ins
You should use CI builds to provide your development team with rapid feedback on any
breaking changes and on the quality of the build after each check-in. This helps the
development team to fix the build issues quickly and can be used as a tool to improve the
quality of your code.
Although Team Foundation Server 2005 does not provide a CI solution out of box, it
does provide the framework for you to implement your own CI build solution.