How to move files Hosted Team Foundation Service build and execute Installshield build

Question

We're using hosted TFS from Microsoft and we are trying to migrate our Cruise Control and SVN build to a full TFS build.

We are using:

Source control: TFS Build agent: TFS Packaging: Installshield 2012

We can create build agents and extensions and have several "example" XAML build scripts, but a basic questions remain:

• How do we get the output of the Visual Studio builds out of the hosted environment and local to our network?
• How do we kick off Installshield locally after the compile is successfully completed?
• How do we get metadata information (like current build version, etc) and transfer it to the local script so we can include it in Installshield?

I know the output of the build is generally stored in $\Rel (or similar) after the build. But how to continue after that?

How

Answer 1

That's an awesome question Karl.

1. All at once- if you want to have your install shield package as part of your TFS build I would recommend creating a local (your network) tfs build server that is plugged into the cloud. You can then install in bits you need, ita now your server, and you can customize your build script with a little powershell that packages the msi and puts it into the output folder. The build server will then put everything, including your msi into the service.

2. After like you describe - you can hook into the API's to download the files locally. Check out http://nakedalm.com/new-un-versioned-repository-in-tfs-2012/ for how you might hook in