Inedo Build Master vs Team Foundation Server

Question

We have our build and deployment scripts set up in TFS 2010. But we are also evaluating indeo Build Master. Has any one used this before?

Also, in general, for a full .NET house does it makes senses to have another SCM management tool? Here is the link for inedo

Answer 1

I found this while researching Inedo's BuildMaster as well. We're a .NET/TFS shop, and BuildMaster solves all sorts of different problems.

Here's a blog post I found that discusses the differences: http://blog.inedo.com/2011/06/06/how-does-buildmaster-compare-to-team-foundation-server/

We're using the free version of BuildMaster and may upgrade to enterprise once we use it for other projects.

Answer 2

Buildmaster has a TFS plugin that helps grab builds from TFS Builds. We use Gated check-in to ensure the code builds and Buildmaster to package the build for 1 click to deploy through the environments. Buildmaster has a fix forward approach (as in, no roll backs), where you create many builds for a release and each propagates through each environment and when 1 or more exist in say QA and have not moved to Staging, they will both be moved to staging at the same time, but in order, thereby ensuring all artifacts move through every environment.

Prior to Buildmaster, we used an xml driven PowerShell script that worked well, but Buildmaster agents saved us from remote desktop script execution. Our Powershell script has 1 advantage that Buildmaster does not yet have. We used the xml configuration file to hold application configuration file information, including file names, relative paths and xpath settings to inject values, xml fragments and remove xml nodes from configuration files coming from source control. Buildmaster uses template configuration files stored in Buildmaster, with tag replacement for each environment. This results in high maintenance should anything change in a configuration file, such as additional environment non specific sections being added, which would require creating the template again.

Buildmaster does have a custom action that allow you to run executables, so theoretically, you can run your own commands to perform functionality that Buildmaster does not have built in, but this is not ideal.