Publishing a Website in the Team Foundation Server Universe

Question

It seems like this should be obvious, so maybe I don’t understand something. I have a TFS setup. My web application code is in the source code. I can check / delete and create assemblies, but I don’t quite understand what is the recommended method for publishing code in a production environment? I was looking for something like publishing a publication on a web server, but can't find anything. I think my biggest problem is that I can’t find a good workflow diagram about how the team should go from editing the code to testing, and then deploying it to production servers, all in a TFS system. If anyone has any thoughts or links to good walkthroughs when publishing a website from TFS that would be fantastic.

Answer 1

For the workflow, I propose a code promotion model.

Inside TFS, you have the idea of ​​creating quality. SO, when you initially check the code in the assembly, it starts with a quality saying “ready to test,” if the assembly passes, testers can decide when they want to take the assembly for testing, when they check the assembly, they can mark it as “ready for deployment, you can use these realeas for deployment.

If nothing has changed in TFS 2010, you need to run your own implementation for deployment. We used the MS assembly to create the MSI using Wix, and then the testers tested the deployment process for us.

Take a look at the following msbuild extensions to help deploy in test / live environments:

• http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org/

• http://msbuildextensionpack.codeplex.com/

I would recommend that you spend a little time on the assembly process and get it at the expense of water, there is nothing more embarrassing that deploying a release for life will not work, and the client will lose faith in it.

Answer 2

I do not believe that the built-in Team Build engine publishes websites, however this can be achieved by overriding AfterDropBuild or AfterEndToEndIteration in the assembly definition to include the necessary tasks for copying the assembly output to your web servers.