TFS & Visual Studio ALM – by Neno Loje

In TFS it’s possible to create “faked” builds, without actually running them. You can read about it in this blog post by Jason Prickett.

Main scenarios are:

• Using a different build tool than TFS Build
  (by creating faked builds will let you use some of the great TFS features).
• Creating sample data to show off TFS functionality

You can create “faked” builds on the command line using the following tool.

Syntax/Usage:

TfsCreateBuild.exe /collection:http://tfsserver:8080/tfs/MyCollection
/project:TeamProject /builddefinition:”Daily Build”
/buildnumber:”MyApplication_Daily_1.0”

(replace parts in blue)

Optional parameters:

• /status:<value> Status of the build (Succeeded, Failed, Stopped, PartiallySucceeded)
• /flavor:<name> Flavor of the build (to track test results against, default: Debug)
• /platform:<name> Platform of the build (to track test results against, default: x86)
• /target:<name> Target of the build (shown on build report, default: default)
• /localpath:<path> Local path of solution file. (e.g. Solution.sln)
• /serverpath:<path> Version Control path for solution file. (e.g. $/proj/src/app.sln)
• /compileerrors:# Number of compilation errors.
• /compilewarnings:# Number of compilation warnings.
• /analysiserrors:# Number of static code analysis errors.
• /analysiswarnings:# Number of static code analysis warnings.
• /droplocation:<path> Location where builds are dropped.
• /buildlog:<path> Location of build log file. (e.g. \server\folder\build.log)
• /changesets:<ID> Changesets to associate (e.g. “/changesets:13,14,15”)*
• /workitems:<ID> Work Items to associate (e.g. “/workitems:102,103”)*

(*) The parameters /changesets and /workitems are only available in the version for TFS 2013 and later.

The result:

Download the tool from here:

• For Team Explorer 2010: TfsCreateBuild.exe (.ZIP, 5,94 KB)
• For Team Explorer 2012: TfsCreateBuild.exe (.ZIP, 11,2 KB)
• For Team Explorer 2013: TfsCreateBuild.exe (.ZIP, 13,1 KB)
• For TFS 2015/2017: TfsToolsSuite.zip (.ZIP, a few MB, standalone)

–Neno