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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-08T10:44:02+00:00

Using TFS 2010 I need to build a solution that depends on a couple

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Using TFS 2010 I need to build a solution that depends on a couple of other solutions held in different team projects. I’m editing my build definition and I create a list of “Projects to Build’. When it comes to build the parent solution I get an error because it’s unable to reference assemblies created by the other solutions. So I go back to edit build definition and add /p:ReferencePath=”c:\builds\3\referencedproject\binaries\” to the “MSBuild Arguments” Build process parameters.

Problem is, I don’t want to hard code the c:\build\3. I guess there may be a $() property I can use in its place – can anyone please advise?

The other problem I have is that the ‘Main’ project and the two other projects that it references live at the same level in the source code. As far as I can tell, I have to set the source control folder to be the level above this – which happens to be the root. This means that TFS Build does a get of all the projects on the root – which includes dozens of projects that are not required for my build. It’s not a critical issue since it makes no attempt to compile these non-related projects but it does increase the time for the build cycle to complete. Is this only way to avoid this to “group” the projects that are required for my build into a different TFS source folder?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’ll start with problem 2 as this should be easiest to solve.

    You have 2 options both involve changing the workspace mapping of your Build Definition.

    You don’t have to map at the folder “above”, you can map individual folders so if your source looks like this.

    $/TP/SolutionA

    $/TP/Folder1/SolutionB

    $/TP/Folder1/SolutionC

    $/TP/Folder2/SolutionD

    and you only want to include SolutionA and SolutionC in your build, you could set the workspace up as follows.

    Workspace Mapping

    This will get just the code you need and preserve the relative paths between them.

    Another option is to use cloaking, you map the “Root” folder and then cloak any folders you want the build to ignore.

    enter image description here

    Both of these methods will restrict the amount of source being downloaded when the build runs, and also prevent “continuous” builds from starting when checkins occur in the folders that haven’t been mapped / Cloaked.

    Problem number 1.

    As Dylan suggests, probably the best thing to do is to use Binary References between solutions. Especially solutions in seperate team projects.

    Check out my answer to this question for a full description.

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