TFS MSBuild Copy Files from Network Location Into Build Directory

Question

We are using TFS to build our solutions. We have some help files that we don't include in our projects as we don't want to grant our document writer access to the source. These files are placed in a folder on our network.

When the build kicks off we want the process to grab the files from the network location and place them into a help folder that is part of source.

I have found an activity in the xaml for the build process called CopyDirectory. I think this may work but I'm not sure what values to place into the Destination and Source properties. After each successful build the build is copied out to a network location. We want to copy the files from one network location into the new build directory.

I may be approaching this the wrong way, but any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

First, you might want to consider your documentation author placing his documents in TFS. You can give him access to a separate folder or project without granting access to your source code. The advantages of this are:

• Everything is in source control. Files dropped in a network folder are easily misplaced or corrupted, and you have no history of changes to them. The ideal for any project is that everything related to the project is captured in source control so you can lift out a complete historical version whenever one is needed.
• You can map the documentation to a different local folder on your build server such that simply executing the "get" of the source code automatically copies the documentation exactly where it's needed.

The disadvantage is that you may need an extra CAL for him to be able to do this.

Another (more laborious) approach is to let him save to the network location, and have a developer check the new files into TFS periodically. If the docs aren't updated often this may be an acceptable compromise.

However, if you wish to copy the docs from the net during your build, you can use one of the MSBuild Copy commands (as you are already aware), or you can use Exec . The copy commands are more complicated to use because they often populated with filename lists that are generated from outputs of other build targets, and are usually used with solution-relative pathnames. But if you're happy with DOS commands (xcopy/robocopy), then you may find it much easier just to use Exec to run an xcopy/robocopy command. You can then "develop" and test the xcopy command outside the MSBuild environment and then just paste it into the MSBuild script with confidence that it will work - much easier than trialling copy settings as part of your full build process.

Exec is documented here . The example shows pretty well how to do what you want, but in your case you can probably just replace the Command attribute with the entire xcopy/robocopy command (or even the name of a batch file) you want to use, so you won't need to set up the ItemGroup etc.