TFS 2008: Questions about auto Builds, Labels and general versioning

Question

Hi all, a bit of background first...

I am setting up a versioning numbering system for our project which currently only has a development branch, but we are now moving towards our first deployment. We are using TFS and we use nightly builds on our dev branch.

The way we are probably going to go with this is that when we get ready for a release we take a branch off dev and call it 1.x. This shall be a test branch: we test it, fix it (then merge back to dev), test it some more then when it is all good we take another branch off the 1.x branch and call it 1.0. It is this branch that gets deployed to production. Any fixes in production will be made to the 1.x, tested and then a new branch 1.1 will be made.

My issue is with the testing of the 1.x branch. Before testing the branch will be locked for obvious reasons. My issue is that QA requires that a round of testing be conducted against a "version number" and if testing fails the next round of testing will be against a new "version number." Us developers want to tie the "version number" to the release and testing can iterate over that version...so there is a conflict here.

My first thought is to use the build number as the point in time that the code is tested against. When its time to submit a new version for testing, the 1.x branch is locked again and a build is kicked off and the VSTS number that is generated becomes a "release condidate 1 for v1.0." Mapping the RC to a build we can do manually in a spreadsheet...

...then someone mentions labels, and that the code should be locked labled and built prior to testing. I have never used labelling before and have just read that build itself creates a label in TFS.

I am now confused about what is the best way to go here. Is using a build number for a release candidate enough? Does manually labelling serve any purpose here (the only benefit I can see is that we can give it out own name and description)? Can I tell TFS NOT to create a label whenever it runs a build and just do all our own labelling at significant points in time (not every build is going to be a release candidate for example)? If so, is NOT creating a label after each build a bad idea, what does labelling give me?

I guess I am confused about where changsets, build numbers/names and labels all fit in with one another...

This is a broad question but its one of those ones where I am not 100% sure what to ask. Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

...then someone mentions labels, and that the code should be locked labled and built prior to testing. I have never used labelling before and have just read that build itself creates a label in TFS.

What you have read is correct. With TFS (unlike, say, SourceSafe), every server action constitutes a 'known point in time' which can later be referred to. You can see what I mean by doing a Get Specific Version... and looking in the Version dropdown: in TFS 2005 the relevant ones I see are Changeset, Date, Label. Now, as you correctly say, every build automatically creates a label. This means that at any future time it will be possible to retrieve the code exactly as it was after any given changeset; at any given date; and when any specific label was applied, thus including when any build was done.

The upshot is that you can use your own labels or not, entirely at your own discretion - the ability to retrieve a given snapshot of the code will be there anyway. I wouldn't suggest trying to inhibit TFS from producing a label for each build (I don't know if this is even possible) - labels cost you nothing.

Answer 2

Your branch 1.x is a consolidation branch which will contain many incremental small evolutions.
Locking the branch is not the answer.

Setting a label (specifically named "for QA test", and locked in order to not be able to move that label, is the usual way to signal the QA team they can build their own workspace and retrieve that exact label.
Then they can begin their tests against the code.
Creating a label after each build is not always practical, since not every build is meant to be tested by QA.