How do I Publish with VS and TFS?

Question

I have several developers working on a web application using VS 2015 Community. Until about a week ago we kept the project on a share and worked on separate pieces and when time to publish I'd publish to my file system and then copy the files over via an RDP window.

We have started using TFS Express 2015 and have the project loaded in and developers are checking in & out as expected.

Now with the addition of TFS, what is the best way to publish the current checked in version? I don't want to accidentally have a dev publish their local copy. And I don't want it automated on a schedule or on check-in, just publish when we decide to.

How does publishing happen with TFS on top of VS?

Answer 1

what is the best way to publish the current checked in version?

Based on your description, you don't want the CI/CD and Scheduled or Gate check-in

So you just need to create a build definition and disable the continuous integration , Scheduled and Gated check-in options. Then trigger build/release manually .

By default (no changeset/commit version specified when build) it will get the latest source to build, that's you said: " current checked in version "

You can reference below articles to publish web application with TFS:

• End to End Walkthrough: Deploying Web Applications Using Team Build and Release Management
• Deploying Web Applications using Team Foundation Build Server – Part 1
• Building Websites in Team Foundation Build 2015

How does publishing happen with TFS on top of VS?

For the publishing, it should be the same with TFS or VS. If you set the same loaction, generally it will overwrite the existing applicaiton.