We use TFS source control and have two build controllers (one VS2010 the other VS2012). We use the default build workflow template bar a few custom changes.
As we have many branches, how would we go about changing the workspace based on the desired branch?
I was thinking of adding a parameter for the branch ($\oursourcecontrol\branches\main) and then just passing it as a variable in to the get workspace part of the workflow.
Or is there a better way of doing it?
You currently can't and it is really a shame. It would completely break the Trigger support for CI and Gates checkins. You can use the TFS Community Build Manager to quickly clone and adjust build definitions to support multiple branches though.
What you could do, is to fetch more than you need (say $/Sourcecontrol/Branches/*) and then use a string-replace on any path parameter (like solutions to build, test settings file etc) to point them all to the correct solution. You'll probably need to do some templating like {BRANCH} so that you can easily replace these tokens.
The Git build template does support this on a Git repository, but you'd need TFS 2013 to make use of server side Git support.
I mapped the server path in the Repository tab at higher level that TFS branches are contained. Cloak rest of the branches not required for Get sources step except the branch to be built. And create variable to pass the branch name, check allow at queue time. Use this branch variable in build steps to make the build definition work for all the branches. You may need more than one variable based on your branches structure in TFS.
Related
Our builds generally have a mish mash of work items and commits associated with them and I cannot tell how TFS determines what to add. We are using TFS 2015 update 3 and TFVC.
When a build runs, it gets code from a location somewhere in the branching and folder of TFVC. Typically, something like "root\dev\src\component name" in this way we avoid getting all of the code in our repository and we have CI set up to run so that any changes in this folder will result in a CI build running.
We also run daily builds which run more tests and create a release package that is used by TFS Release Management. I would expect that any changes to code inside of the folder defined in setting up the repository for this build to be included in the associated change-sets of a build. I also expect that any changes checked-in outside of these branches would not be associated. But this is not the case. We see commits from across the entire project.
Does anyone know how this is supposed to work?
I am not sure if this should go in the question or the answer but I have found some additional information, thanks to the hints provided in the answers below.
It appears that the source settings will take the common root between mapped folders of the repository settings, so if I have 2 folders $/Relo/Dev/B1/src/Claims.Services and $/Relo/Dev/B1/src/PSScripts it will take the common root $/Relo/Dev/B1/src as the source settings and include any changes from that folder down within the build. Can anyone confirm this? Of course thats not what I want to have happen. In the History tab of the build definition if I looked at the diff I can see a field "defaultBranch" in the json which seems to be the value that controls this, is there any way to update this field directly?
TFS determines what changesets should be mapped to a build based on the Source Repository Mappings (Build vNext) in the build definition and the last successful build.
So, you will see a list of the changesets with files committed in the lowest common base of any of the mapped folders including all their descendents, since the latest successful build. Whenever you get a successful build (I hope that it happens more often than failing ones ;-)) the list will shorten and only show the last check-in.
Example mappings below will result in any changeset made to anything below $/Relo/Dev/B1/src (because it is the lowest common base):
$/Relo/Dev/B1/src/Claims.Services
$/Relo/Dev/B1/src/PSScripts
Similar it will pick up all the related work items to the above changesets.
This is what should happen. If you see something else, I would have a closer look at the Repository Mappings or Source Settings of the build definition.
#Noel - I guess you are using vNext build and not XAML builds. Or are you using a mix of XAML and vNext?
In general a scheduled TFS build will associate all changes which were not associated in the last successful run of the same build.
I suggest you check once again if the source folder locations are the same for CI build and Daily build?
I have multi-configuration project in Jenkins. My git repository have different branches. For example:
dev
stage
bug/code1
feature/code2
etc...
I want to create different Post build tasks, Publish HTML reports etc for each branch.
What is the problem? I changed configuration for stage branch. All works fine only before Branch Indexing. After this process, custom configuration for each branch replaced by multi-configuration project. It means if I added specific task only for stage branch, after Branch Indexing task will be removed.
Multi-Branch Project Plugin says this:
Sub-projects appear to be configurable, but they will be overwritten
by branch indexing if you manually modify them. There is no clear way
to remove or hide the configuration option on sub-projects (except
maybe with project-based matrix authorization??), though version 0.1.x
of this plugin accomplished that via some trickery that is not
possible in newer versions.
So my question is: How I can create custom configuration for each branch? Or what is the best solution for this? Maybe I should create different projects for stage, dev branches?
Thank you.
We have the similar situation like you, more than 10 branches need to be maintained. Instead of using multi branch plugin, we use job dsl to create the jobs for each branch.
For example, hello_branch1, hello_branch2....
Inside our job dsl project, we save the different json config for the different branches. In your case, you can think we save the post build script, or report to be published....
This will make sure the generated jobs are standalone and will not affect each other.
Br,
Tim
Our TFS 2013 admins have given us one build definition to build our solution and run all unit tests and they are not willing to create any more build definitions. We are following feature branch strategy and would like to use this build definition for our gated builds. I am trying to find how to use this one build definition with multiple branches.
I know, I can add all branches to Source settings and build them whenever a check-in is made. But I want to find out, if there is any way to add branches to Source settings, but only compile the solution that has been checked in. For example if we add 5 solutions to the Source settings, we want to compile only the solution that has changed rather than all 5 solutions.
You will need to setup an incremental build that only builds the solutions that have changed.
Ideally you will want to setup a build for every branch. You would still use the one build template given to you, but you would define the work-spaces and behavior differently for each branch depending on your needs. However if you do not have that option you can still implement what you are trying to do.
For example if you only want to build the solution that has changed you will set up your build to be an incremental build like the following:
In the "Process" tab update the "Items to build" section to any *.sln or *.*proj
In the "Workspace" section, select only the source control paths of each branch if setting up a build for every branch or select the entire source if that is how you have to do it ($/).
Change the build to an incremental build by changing the Build Process Parameters on the "Process" tab - CleanWorkspace=None
Tag one of the build agents, so that it is the only one used for these incremental builds. Set the build to only use this tagged agent. It is important that the same build agent or set of agents is used for the builds if incremental builds are to work.
We have lots of feature branches, and we don't want to manually create a build definition for each of them for continuous integration.
Is it possible to create one build definition in TFS Build 2015 that will build solution from the branch when code is checked in to it? We are using TFVC for source control.
Preferably, only the active branches should be downloaded to the build agent, as we have a lot of old branches that don't get any check-ins.
There is a similar question about old TFS Build system, but since build system was completely changed in TFS 2015, the answer would be different too - TFS build, one build for many branches
Short answer: No.
This works for Git, not for TFVC, unfortunately.
Actually, it would appear to work out of the box with TFS 2015 Update 2, according to a test I just ran with the following simple structure...
$/Project
$/Project/Product1/Solution1/
$/Project/Product1/Solution1/solution1.sln
: (and everything below it)
$/Project/Product1/Solution1-branch/solution1.sln
: (and everything branched below it)
$/Project/Product1/Feature2/another-solution1.sln
: (and everything below it)
Build settings:
Build tab | Solution should be "**\*.sln", Repository tab | Repository should be "Project" and Mappings should include "$/Project/Product1/".
The ** in the Solution field causes it to search recursively for *.sln files, which it then builds in sequence.
I just tried this and it built all branches one after the other.
Excluding "old" branches might be more difficult if you use the single recursive approach, but you could always simply list the desired branches in the Mappings area - the nett result should be the same.
Hope that helps.
If I understand your question, this might work for you.
This will build all feature branches, plus the develop (default) branch as part of CI.
Not sure why, but if you reverse the order of these it does not work.
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.