Can I Override WebDeploy archive paths through TFS Build?

Question

My team is starting to take on the challenge of automating our Build-Deploy-Test process, beginning with the build.

Right now we have Build Definitions configured in TFS that will publish our site to our servers using Web Deploy, and this is working; however, we aren't able to keep an archive of the packages that would be created with each build because when we turn on package creation with the MSBuild parameter /p:CreatePackageOnPublish=true, the build fails on silly NTFS file length constraints.

Exception Message: TF400889: The following path contains more than the allowed 259 characters: \\builds.tfs.company.com\builds\Project.Dev.Nightly\Project.Dev.Nightly_20130630.6\Debug\_PublishedWebsites\Project.Middleware.Service_Package\Archive\Content\C_C\Builds\1005\Project\Project.Dev.Nightly\Sources\Source\Multi\Middleware\Project.Middleware.Service.

Is there a way that we can break the Archive folder out somewhere else?

Answer 1

You can edit the path by using the _PackageTempDir argument for MSBuild.

Just add _PackageTempDir=D:\{desired dir structure} when you're passing in MSBuild arguments.

More full explanation of this property can be found here -

VS2010 Web Deploy: how to remove absolute paths and automate setAcl?