How can I create RTC Build Definitions and Build Engines with Visual Studio 2010?

Question

I am trying to configure a Build Server with the Jazz-based Rational Team Concert(RTC) for a distributed team already using RTC 3.0.1. Documentation is often confusing as it tends to be Eclipse based. This article (https://jazz.net/library/article/119) refers to a nonexistent Package Explorer. Other articles state that I may build with the Jazz Build Engine, of which I haven't found any downloads. Rational Build Forge is mentioned for a price, but I hope to do this as close to free as possible. In summary my scenario is:

• An RTC server with the source code repositories.
• A Build Server with Visual Studio 2010 and the Rational Team Concert Client for Eclipse IDE (version 3.0.1)
• Several developers using the RTC Visual Studio client successfully.

Can anyone point me to the correct documentation for this particular scenario?

Answer 1

Two options:

• using BuildForge (RTC knows how to integrate with it, but Build Forge isn't free. See "Enterprise Build Solutions with Build Forge and Rational Team Concert 3.0").
  See "Rational Team Concert 3.0 and Build Forge: An integration scenario".
• using Team Build (part of RTC), which includes a Jazz Build Engine (JBE) that pulls requests from a build definition queue to build these configurations.
  The limits of TeamBuild: once you begin to make your Ant scripts larger and more difficult to debug or want to choreograph your software delivery life-cycle with several phases of activities within the same project, you will likely want to use Build Forge to accomplish these types of enterprise-level automation goals.

You can start with Team Build and the Jazz Build Engine you can even define several on one machine, to avoid processing all the Build jobs in sequence only).
You can install it following this page, and accessing the "all downloads page of your RTC version": look for a "Build System Toolkit".

None of this is specific to Visual Studio, but if you can start a build with TeamBuild, you can then check how Visual Studio integrates with the builds.