TFS 2015 Release Process Assistance

Question

We are using TFS 2015 for our source control, build and deployment. We are developing an MVC application.

We have managed to get our build process working great, deploying using web deploy. We had it setup so that it was running under continuous integration and deploying to Development and test environment and running code first migrations.

We have now been told that releasing code to test comes under the governance of another department, so we have to hand over that to them. They need to be able to determine exact versions of code to deploy.

We see two options, 1) Let them queue a build using our test build definition. They will need to specify the commit ID of the code to deploy. This is not ideal as it is a new build of code, also ideally we would choose a Git tag or code version rather than commit ID. Is that possible in TFS Build definitions?

2) Edit the development build to publish all relevant files into a build artefact. Then use TFS release management to copy those files to correct folders on our internal web server. This seems the best option, they can select the exact same version of code that has been deployed and tested on Dev environment. However I have struggled to discern how to run code first migrations using this method. Also is it possible to deploy artefacts from another TFS project in the same TFS collection? Any help anyone can give would be appreciated.

If there are any other options I would be eager to hear them. Using TFS 2015 and indeed release management is a new thing to everyone in the team!

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can specify the tag when queue build in TFS 2015.

1. Click queue build
2. Click branch dropdown > Tags
3. Select a Tags

It is impossible to deploy artifacts from other TFS project in the same TFS collection. But you can refer to these steps to deploy artifacts of other build in different team project.

1. Edit your build definition to publish build artifacts to a shared folder by using Publish Build Artifact step
2. Edit your release definition
3. Add Windows machine File Copy or Copy files task to copy artifacts to corresponding folder
4. Other tasks (eg IIS deploy, azure deploy) with that artifacts files.

On the other hand, you can create release through REST API .