Saturday, February 11, 2006

Continuous Integration Using Team Foundation Build

What is continuous integration?
Continuous integration is the process of starting a build whenever code is checked into the source control server. It recommends having a dedicated build server where the sources are synchronized, compiled, and unit tests are run.

Software development life cycle processes evolved over time. Development teams realized the importance of having periodic builds; starting with a weekly build, becoming tighter when 'nightlies' began, and even tighter still with 'hourlies.' As the benefits of frequent builds became more visible, organizations wanted more builds more regularly, and started 'continuous integration.' But nightlies still exist; many still rely on them for getting a formal, reliable build.

How to do Continuous Integration Using Team Foundation Build?
Team Foundation Build is the build automation tool in Visual Studio Team System. Built on top of MSBuild, Team Foundation Build integrates with other Visual Studio Team System tools like source control, work item tracking, and test execution to provide an end-to-end build process. It does not provide continuous integration out of the box, but it can be customized to easily do so.

Check out here how you can easily do that...

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