I am testing vNext in TFS 2015. I have not found a way to trigger builds in parallel. Is that not supported in TFS?
I have found this:
http://www.jaylee.org/post/2013/03/30/Building-in-Parallel-Across-Multiple-Build-Agents-with-TFS-2012-with-Gated-Checkin.aspx
but that is old and not compatible with vNext.
To be clear I would like to be able to trigger the same build def multiple times, running each (including all its build steps) concurrently.
There's a parallel tickbox under the options tab.
There is currently no equivalent of a drag and drop parallel task. However you can spin up as many build processes as you like using PowerShell. Each of the built in tasks are just PowerShell commands and PowerShell also supports workflow tasks.
As mentioned
Build Options:MultiConfiguration here and
Build Define here
TFS2015 vNext may be only support parallel build for different platforms by different build variables
Related
How do you set-up both a daily (nightly) build and continuous integration?
I've created a CI build in Visual Studio, but the trigger is only one of options, but I want both a CI and a scheduled nightly build
If you are using the new build system, you can create multiple triggers.
Clone that CI Build Definition and change the Trigger condition.
I want to migrate My jobs from cruisecontrol to Jenkins.
What are the steps that I need to do to achieve this ?
1) Install Jenkins
2) Use the Jenkins docs to create some simple jobs (in other words, learn how Jenkins works but using it for some simple demo projects)
3) Examine your existing cruise control jobs and break them up into groups whose builds are similar.
4) Migrate one group at a time by first creating a Jenkins job form one of the Cruise Control projects, then create the other jobs based on the first (Jenkins lets you create new jobs based on an existing job).
If you don't have specific needs, the migration is easy as CruiseControl.NET simply execute task and build reports, as all other continuous integration tools.
Simply create new tasks in Jenkins
Fill it with the executable tasks you had in CC.NET
(eventually) need to improve the dashboard if you
want specific information
You did not specify your Build/Test/Deploy Steps or of any special needs ,
But as a Vanilla CI would be
1) Build using MSBuild
2) Test Using MSTest
3) Deploy using MSBuild/NANt/ANT/Powershell or even Batch scripts .
All Those steps can be easily replicated to Jenkins Because there are dedicated plugins for all of them .
I would suggest for you to select a simple Build>Test>Deploy Flow from CC.NET and recreate it in Jenkins, after that copying it for other projects,
I have a MsBuild process that start as part of build using TFS Build Services 2013. I need to pass a few parameters to this process (for example the build number). I've done this previously by modifying the build template and added these parameters to the list of parameters sent into MSBuild, something that has worked fine.
I did however found that TFS Build Services writes a number of environment variables for run (build number being one of them) and as I easily can change my MSBuild script I'd rather just use these directly variables instead of modifying the build template.
My question is however how this will work when I have several build agents? Won't they write over each others values in the environment variables? Can I be 100% certain in my MSBuild script that I didn't get the build number of the next build that might have started in parallel?
Each TFS build is done using a specific build number. If you have multiple agents working on a 'parallel' build, they will all use the same build number. Each build agent will be running in their own specific environment and will not have any issue if other agents are running in parallel - the build number for one agent will not 'clobber' another during a build.
I have one build controller and it has 4 build agents in it. When I run more than one build at a time it queues the build. Why it doesn't run 4 builds parallel? Is there any settings that I should change?
I am running TFS 2012.
running gated checkin
it also runs all the tests after the build is done.
Thanks for the help!
This is 'by design'. From Use a gated check-in build process to validate changes
Each gated check-in build definition can have only one running build at a time.
This is necessary to preserve the logic coherence of you version control.
If this is slowing your dev organization, you have many options (some are in the doc linked):
Change from Gated to Batched gated
Have multiple Build definitions (mapped on different portions of you sources)
Minimize the checks during build
Feed more resources to the Build server
Consider TFS 2010's ability for a Build Controller to have 1+ build agents. Since builds are a subjective topic to the team/environment, consider an environment where builds are performed on commit/check-in. Each Project Collection will have 10+ Team Projects, but perhaps only 1 or 2 are being committed to in a day.
When should a TFS administrator consider creating a new build agent?
Do multiple agents run in parallel?
When a single agent is defined to a Build Controller, does it run serially?
MSDN states: "if you set up your agents to have specialized capabilities..." . What does this mean? A technology/platform differentiator? How can you setup your agents to have specialized capabilities?
How can 'tagging' build agents be used effectively in an environment where builds are (typically) performed on each check-in.
You use multiple build agents to support multiple build machines (I work currently with a build farm with 3 build machines - and thus 3 build agents - to distribute the load).
You also might want to have multiple build agents to be able to run builds in parallel. This is a nice feature to share resources, but a requirement when you start working with Test/Lab Management features.
With the capabilities: for example you can setup a build agent with version 1 of a 3rd party component, and a second build agent with version 2. With tagging you can specify in the build definition which build agent it will choose from out of the pool of build agents.
We use 2 build agents on the same machine at work, since we only have one build machine.
The first one handles our CI builds, and is tag with CI. The build definition for the CI build is set up to only use agents that have the CI tag.
The second one is for manually queued builds, mostly for the release branch builds.
I specialized the CI build agent, because it was not uncommon when we were preparing a new build for QA to have several developers check into the development branch, which would slowing down being able to release the build to QA.
One of our builds takes 9 minutes. Its nice that you don't have to be in the Queue behind it if you happen to deploy at the wrong time.