Is it possible to implement pre-tested commits in TFS?

Question

I'm intrigued by the idea in TeamCity of pre-testing commits (i.e. verifying they don't break the build before allowing check-in to occur) and I'm wondering if there is any way to implement this in TFS. It looks like TeamCity can interface to TFS version control as a backing store but of course I'd prefer a free solution.

Answer 1

In TFS there is the notion of check-in policies where you can execute code on the client and that can validate check-ins before allowing them to occur. However - what you are after sounds more like the notion of a "Gated Check-in" where a build is attempted on a central build server before the check-in is committed to the main code base. Take a look at the BuddyBuild project on CodePlex to add that functionality in the current versions of TFS.

In TFS 2010, gated check-in builds will be a feature out of the box.