I have TFS continuous integration set up, where every check-in triggers a build. But I also want some scripts to automatically modify specific files as part of the build process. This causes a cascade of builds, because files modified by scripts cause another build to be queued. How do I enable continuous integration, but except some check-ins from triggering the build?
UPDATE Solution is: put the ***NO_CI*** into comments when checking in.
If you look at the way a Gated Build works it bypasses any configured CI by spending ##NOCI## or something similar to the checkin comment. I would think that you could do the same to bypass.
Switch to a Gated Build for one build and see the created comment tag.
Related
I don't understand why can I check this two options together because this options are not similar in their behavior.
I only want to check in the changes when the build (CI) succeeds.
What I need to do?
Have a nice day.
There is no impact between CI and Gated check-in. When you select CI, it will build whenever someone checks in code, it happens after the changes have been checked in to TFS. If you select Gated check-in, it will accept check-ins only if the submitted changes merge and build successfully, which means only the build succeeded the changes can be checked in.
By default, CI builds are not run after the gated check-in process is complete and the changes are checked in. However, if you do want CI builds to run after a gated check-in, select the Run CI triggers for committed changes check box.
Detailed information you can refer to the link below:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/pipelines/build/triggers?view=vsts
Since you only want to check in the changes that builds succeed, you
should only select Gated check-in.
Currently my TFS 2012 build environment features a Build Verification (BVT) build which mostly follows LabDefaultTemplate.xaml worfklow. The BVT build first queues a Continuous Build (which mostly follows the DefaultTemplate.11.xaml), waits for that build to finish, then performs the necessary tests.
Now, I would like to change this BVT build to be Gated Check-In. Which is to say, I don't want any changes to be committed until the BVT is successful. The problem seems to be queuing the Continuous build definition in such a way that it will pick up the shelf set. This logic appears to be dependent on the build being started with Reason = "CheckInShelveset". However it seems all builds queued from another build always have Reason "UserCreated". Has anyone found a way around this problem? Is it possible to chain builds together while still having Gated Check-Ins?
Is it possible programmatically to on a Gated -Check in build in TFS 2010 to not trigger a Gated Build when checking in a specific file type, i.e. ".config"? How can I accomplish that?
Not that I know of, you can only configure the workspace mappings which controls when the build triggers. so you can include or cloak folders, but not file types.
Presumably you don't want to run the Gated Build because a config file won't affect the build. But still running the build anyways shouldn't really hurt anything, you just waste a little bit of resources on your build server.
If it's really a concern, you can customize the build template, to look at what files are in the linked changeset (using a custom activity and the TFS API probably), and if it's just config files abort the build (with a successful result).
I would go down the route of seeing what messages TFS processes when performing a gated checkin. It might be possible to some how write a TFS server side plugin to hook the event, inspect the changeset and stop the build while allowing the shelf set to commit.
You are swimming pretty far out of Microsofts swim lane on this one so I'm not sure how much work and what the side effects would be on this one.
FWIW, I would want the build to run even on a config file change because I always want to be able to deploy the latest build and see the state of my project.
TFS build templates have the NoCIOption property that drives whether all gated check-in messages have ***NO_CI*** appended. This in turn optimizes away the daily continuous integration (CI) build if all the check-ins since the last CI build have been gated ones.
However, in my environment, the set of tests run during a gated check-in is much smaller than the set of tests run during a CI build, to achieve reasonable gated check-in latency, and we therefore want to run the CI build even if there have been only gated check-ins since the last CI build; this makes the prominent "NO_CI" marker as it stands quite confusing.
Furthermore, it would be nice if we had some kind of direct reference from the commit message to its respective gated check-in build number, for example from code history.
Is it possible to customize the commit message during gated check-in, so as to include the build number in it?
I have been looking at SyncWorkspace properties but saw nothing obvious.
At the moment we don't have a way to customize the commit message at this time. If you want the CI build to run after the gated checkin then you simply need to set the NoCIOption to False a CI build will be triggered after the check-in.
I don't think it is possible to get the NO CI message into a gated builds check in. Maybe you could consider using a Scheduled Build instead of a CI build to ensure your larger test set gets executed regularly.
Is it possible to customize the commit message during gated check-in, so as to include the build number in it?
No, this would not be possible. The build number is generated as part of the build script's execution; in order to display it at the point of checkin you would have to wait for the build to have started, which it may not always do immediately (e.g. if your server has to queue the build).
Currently we are using StarTeam to perform the build as well as versioning. we planned to migrate startteam to TFS2010. We have some script for perform the build. i wanted to change this script according to my requirement. i gone through the TFS but i had lot more confusion.
in StarTeam, we will get a files from "Ready to Build" label and perform the build. In TFS, how we are going to get a files from TFS? What concept should i use to get a files and perform the build? i have gone through the lot of commands like get, check-in, checkout etc..
If we use "tf get" command, we can get all the files from TFS but i have a clarification on that. shall i get all the files from TFS for every build? i hope, this is unnecessary headache.. correct me if i am wrong..
how we perform the build in TFS? i have read some types of build such as manual, gatedcheckin, Continuous Integration and schedule.
Is there any relationship between branch and build activities?
In TFS, What is the meaning of Workspace?
As said, many questions in one. Hope this helps along the way:
A workspace is a mapping between the server and a local storage,
similar to checkout in Subversion, view in ClearCase, etc.
"TF get" normally only fetches those files that have changed since
last update. You can force it to fetch everything - and sometimes
have to - but its not normally done.
Team Build is the recommended system to build with when using TFS. It can take some time to get into (Windows Workflow-based), but is quite powerful. There are default process definitions that set up the most common actions for you.
By default, you can't control whether to build by setting a certain label, but you can define that only this label should be used when builds are triggered. Labels in TFS work a little differently compared to other VCS, though, so maybe there's an 'opportunity' to re-think your build process along the way. If you're set on using a label as before, you'll need to build a Custom build activity.