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Integrating Dependencies into Team Build 2010

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I was just reading Brad Butt's Suggestions for Microsoft, Part 1 and I thought I'd take the opportunity to let him know that we are addressing two of his three frustrations in Team Build 2010.

Brad's Frustration #1: MSTest cannot stand alone from the Visual Studio IDE

The Team Test team is planning to provide us with a redistributable package that encapsulates MSTest.exe and all of its dependencies. We plan to integrate that into the Build Service installation for Team Build 2010 meaning that you'll be able to run your automated tests on a default build service installation.

Brad's Frustration #2: VSTS Code Coverage only works with MSTest

Unfortunately, I can't help Brad with this one. Hopefully it's somewhat mitigated by what we're doing with frustration #1.

Brad's Frustration #3: MSBuild can't build my MSI

You can work around this limitation by invoking DevEnv on a Visual Deployment (vdproj) project, but I'll admit it's less than ideal. We are, however, integrating the WiX redistributable into the Team Build 2010 installer as well so that you'll be able to build your WiX projects on a default build service installation. You'll still have to port your Deployment Project to WiX which may be a fairly involved process depending on the complexity of your installer.

It's great to get validation from members of the .NET community like Brad that we're on the right track. I just wish we could get these features out to you faster. I do encourage everyone to keep on blogging, posting to the forums, etc. We really are paying attention and doing our best to make VSTS/TFS the very best team software development solution out there.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2008
    for #3, I would recomend looking closely at WiX. For build enviornments (Rob talks about this a lot) and for getting the deployment logic correct, it is good to use WiX instead of the deployment projects in my experience.

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2008
    When will we have team system 2010 available?