Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Benjamin Day

Consultant & Trainer

Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.

The Build system in TFS2012 could be the best feature in the product. Actually, it's almost definitely the best feature in the product.  It's got a slick Windows Workflow structure that has done away with the old-style, clunky text-based and XML-based scripts.  It's got a great integration with Source Control through Gated Check-ins that requires a build to pass before code can be checked in.  (Buh-bye, broken builds.)  There's even integration with Virtual Lab Management to help with your QA process.

If you want to eliminate a bunch of integration headaches and improve quality on your project, using TFS Builds is a perfect place to start. 

In this talk, Ben will start by giving you a tour of the features.  Then he'll move on to show you how to configure your build servers and builds.  Finally, he'll show you how to extend and customize the default build scripts to handle environment-specific configuration files, configuring IIS applications, and more.

You will learn:

• Why care about automated builds? 
• What is the architecture of TFS Build?  (Agents, Controllers, Build Scripts)
• Route builds to specific build servers using Tags
• Customize the default build script
• Pass arguments into the automated builds