How to provide non-deployed dependencies to a build service?

Question

Some times ago I asked the question about how to integrate an application using dependencies on a build server and I had quite satisfying answers. Today I am facing a different case. For a project I have to use non-redistribuable depedencies (RDL object model for SSRS). It means that out-of-the-box, these assemblies are not made to be deployed for development purpose. But somehow, I need to...

My first guess was to publish them in the GAC. Fine, it worked and the build server was able to compile the project smoothly. But then I realised that it broke some applications like the Report Server and the Report Builder (probably it would also break BIDS). So publishing in the GAC is definitely not a decent solution.

My second guess was to check the assemblies in source control. Well, it could work if I had only 2 assemblies for an amount of about 1MB. But here it is 23 assemblies and 29MB I have to check in, so it is definitely not suitable either.

I don't know much about MSBuild targets and maybe it could be a solution but I really have no idea on how to use it. I have been scratching my head hard and now I have to chose between breaking my builds or breaking my services!

Answer 1

As some people stated in comments we finally decided to source control the assemblies.

But as we are in an environment where we sometimes need to move a lot, which means not always in office, and need to work from distance with occasionally somewhat unreliable Internet connection, we decided to put some strict condition on whether we source control the assemblies or we deploy them on the build server and development machines.

Assemblies will be source controlled if all these criterias are met:

• Assemblies/Framework is not deployable/redistribuable
• Assemblies/Framework deployment may interfere with local machine services stability
• Total amount of deployed assemblies on the project collection does not exceed 100MB

Answer 2

You could try using a different repository just for these assemblies, and do a checkout/update during the build job.

Also, if you want to keep it in the main repo as well, you could use svn:externals (http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch07s03.html) to automatically update the DLLs when you update your working copy.