Continuous integration using TFS

Question

I am heavily used to using SVN/Git coupled with Teamcity to do Continuous Integration & Delivery. Pretty easy there to create MSBuild / NANt scripts to do what I want. Recently for work purpose I am placed in a project where I am trying to set TFS up to do the same but gosh a clear cut doco seems to be unavailable there (or I am too used to Teamcity).

Will you be able to point me to the right direction re

• TFS build server best practices
• Creating zipped artifacts and persisting them (build def settings doesn't seem to work in my case for some reason)
• Deploying the artifacts in different environments

Answer 1

You can integrate TFS with all kinds of tooling but if you want to use all TFS offers you, you can use the following:

• A Build Definition for your project that uses one of your build servers. This Build Definition can be configured to run as a CI build and store the build output on the TFS server. This output can then be downloaded as a zip file through the web portal.
• For deployment, Microsoft Release Management is the recommended tooling. RM can be tied to your build (using a special Release Management template that stores the build output in a shared folder on your server).

Combining CI builds with Release Management gives you a nice solution for continuous deployment through all kinds of environments

Another option is by using Lab Management. This is well suited for deploying and managing test environments, both physical and virtual.

When it comes to best practices for TFS I would love to point you to all the ` guidance we created as ALM Rangers. Here you will find guidance on installing, configuring and running TFS in all kinds of scenarios including Build servers and DevOps automatic deployment scenarios.