Does TFS offer a way to save, track, and later redeploy builds by build number, or can you only deploy .dlls compiled from the current codebase? I'm looking for functionality similar to what you find in Changeman DS.
+2
A:
Yes. Every build definition in Team Build has a "retention policy" that defines how many historical builds should be kept, depending on certain criteria. You can also mark individual builds as "keep indefinitely." Kind of like a Tivo...
Example walkthru with screenshots: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/08/14/tfs-2008-a-basic-guide-to-team-build-2008.aspx
If you need to recover a build that has already been deleted from the drop share, you can do that too -- you'll just have to rebuild it. Simply queue up the build definition, but before you hit Go, type /p:GetVersion="XXX" in the text area at the bottom labeled "additional MSBuild arguments." XXX can be any versionspec, just like you'd use at the tf.exe command line. Examples might be "C12345" or "D1/10/2010" or "LsomeLabel".
Richard Berg
2010-01-30 16:13:29
Is there a way to one-click deploy historical builds the same way you can with the current build?
EF
2010-02-01 16:35:58
TFS 2008 doesn't have a 1-click deploy on ANY build type, to my knowledge. (Let me know if I'm missing something.) On the bright side, whatever deploy steps you've written for a normal build should work identically on "historical" builds.
Richard Berg
2010-02-01 19:06:24