Question

I am just not able to find but sure this should have been asked before, I am trying to set builds on various branch , which differ in terms of workspace mapping and other arguments that are related to branch location , like solution file, what happens is when we increment the major or minor number I branch the code , what I am planning to achieve is when code is branched I could generate build definition file with specific arguments related to that branch like correct workspace , path to solution file and to version file.

Answer 1

I would suggest creating a custom utility that you use to create a branch that will perform the branch operation in version control and also create a build definition to match. Below is some code to create a build definition using the TFS API.

Alternatively, you can create a web service that subscribes to the CheckInEvent from the TFS Eventing Service and inspect the details to see if it was a branch operation and create a build definition programmatically from there.

Below code was shamelessly copied from this great blog post: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2010/04/26/creating-a-build-definition-using-the-tfs-2010-api.aspx

string teamProject = "TeamProjectName";
string buildController = "BuildControllerName";

TfsTeamProjectCollection server = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://<tfs>:<port>/tfs"));
server.EnsureAuthenticated();
IBuildServer buildServer = (IBuildServer)server.GetService(typeof(IBuildServer));

var buildDefinition = buildServer.CreateBuildDefinition(teamProject);
buildDefinition.Name = "TestBuild";
buildDefinition.Description = "description here...";

buildDefinition.ContinuousIntegrationType = ContinuousIntegrationType.Individual;


buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/Path/project.sln", "$(SourceDir)", WorkspaceMappingType.Map);
buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/OtherPath/", "", WorkspaceMappingType.Cloak); 

buildDefinition.BuildController = buildServer.GetBuildController(buildController); 
buildDefinition.DefaultDropLocation = @"\\SERVER\Drop\TestBuild"; 

//Get default template 
var defaultTemplate = buildServer.QueryProcessTemplates(teamProject).Where(p => p.TemplateType == ProcessTemplateType.Default).First(); 
buildDefinition.Process = defaultTemplate;

//Set process parameters 
var process = WorkflowHelpers.DeserializeProcessParameters(buildDefinition.ProcessParameters); 

//Set BuildSettings properties 
BuildSettings settings = new BuildSettings(); 
settings.ProjectsToBuild = new StringList("$/pathToProject/project.sln"); 
settings.PlatformConfigurations = new PlatformConfigurationList(); 
settings.PlatformConfigurations.Add(new PlatformConfiguration("Any CPU", "Debug"));
process.Add("BuildSettings", settings);

buildDefinition.ProcessParameters = WorkflowHelpers.SerializeProcessParameters(process); 

buildDefinition.RetentionPolicyList.Clear();
buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Succeeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All);
buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Failed, 10, DeleteOptions.All);
buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Stopped, 1, DeleteOptions.All);
buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.PartiallySucceeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All);

buildDefinition.Save();