Walkthrough: Configuring and Using a Desktop Build
Team Foundation Build includes the ability to run builds locally wherein a developer can build the team project and run tests locally before checking in his changes. This walkthrough demonstrates the steps used to perform a desktop build.
Desktop Build Differences
A desktop build scenario behaves differently from public builds in the following ways:
Only the compilation and testing (if enabled) are performed.
Other public build steps such as sync, clean, code churn, copying to drop locations, and work item update and creating new work items are not performed in desktop builds
The default MSBuild logger is used and the build output is written to the console.
The build and test results data is not published or pushed to warehouse.
Desktop Build Results
As discussed above, the Team Foundation Build logger is not used for desktop builds, therefore no data is pushed to the database to create status reports. To view the results of desktop builds, you must redirect the default MSBuild logger output file and view it. You can control the verbosity of MSBuild logger using the verbose option of the MSBuild command. For more information, see MSBuild Logging.
Prerequisites
Visual Studio 2005 Team System.
A connection to a Team Foundation Server and at least one existing team project. For more information, see Walkthrough: Joining a Team Project and How to: Create a Team Project.
At least one build type defined. For more information, see Walkthrough: Creating a Build Type in Team Foundation Build.
Required Permissions
To complete this walkthrough, you must have the Team Foundation Server Start/Resume a build permission. For more information, see Team Foundation Build Security Rights and Permissions.
To perform a desktop build
Manually synchronize the team project root directory from Team Foundation source control locally. For example:
The Team Foundation source control server has the following structure:
$\
Portfolio Project1
** Team Build Types**
** Main**
** TeamBuild.proj**
** Solution1**
** Solution2**
** Solution3**
After synchronizing team project1 to the local directory C:/temp, your local directory structure is as follows:
C:/Temp
** /Portfolio Project1**
** /Team Build Types**
** /Main**
** /TeamBuild.proj**
** /Solution1**
** /Solution2**
** /Solution3**
Warning
The local directory structure must exactly match the server structure for the build to run properly.
Start the Team Foundation Build process by running MSBuild, on the command line, type:
C:\temp\Portfolio Project1\Build Configurations\Main> MSBuild TeamBuild.proj
The paths for the solutions in TeamBuild.proj is resolved because the default solution root mentioned in TeamBuild.proj is “…/..”. Also, the solutions passed to the MSBuild task use this solution root property as (@solutionroot)/Solution1. Therefore in this case, the value of solution root becomes C:/Temp/Portfolio Project1.
Note
Use the /p switch to modify the solution root if needed. For more information, see the "Setting Properties from the Command Line" section of MSBuild Properties.