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TFS Build / Release Configuration Utilities: Edit app.config, web.config, appsettings.json, and XML
When you’re working automated builds and automated releases, you frequently need to edit configuration files like app.config, web.config, and appsettings.json. Well, I wrote a command line utility to do this and I figured I’d share. I’ve got a version that is an .exe that can be used on a Windows build agent and I’ve got a version that’s written…
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“How do I update my TFS2017 build agents?”
I got a question recently asking how to make sure that your on-premise Team Foundation Server 2017 build agents are up to date. If you’ve installed a bunch of build agents over time, you’ll notice that when you go to download the bits, that the version number sometimes changes. They generally stay up to date…
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Walkthrough: Install TFS2017 Build Agent on Windows and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux
I’ve updated my Team Foundation Server 2017 install guide to add new chapters for installing build servers. This new version (v1.1) now has a chapter for installing the TFS2017 build agent on Windows and a chapter for installing the build agent on Ubuntu Linux 16.04. If you’re interested in installing TFS, here’s my TFS2017 install…
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Using TFS Build to Deploy Entity Framework Database Migrations with Migrate.exe
In the discussion thread for my DevOps Skills class at Pluralsight, I got a question about how to deploy database changes in a build using Entity Framework Migrations (aka. EF Code First Migrations). It’s actually pretty easy and it all comes down to a tool that comes with Entity Framework called migrate.exe. When you deploy your…
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One TFS Build, Multiple Git Repositories with Submodules
In the discussion thread for my DevOps Skills class at Pluralsight, I got a question about how to do TFS Builds and TFS Release Management with code that spans multiple Git repositories. For good reasons, his team has separated their code into multiple repos. But when they go to create a build in TFS, the…
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New Pluralsight Course: DevOps Skills with Visual Studio & TFS
It’s been a long time coming and my latest Pluralsight course is finally out! DevOps Skills for Developers with Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server (TFS)! TL;DR — DevOps using Visual Studio 2015 and Team Foundation Server 2015 – How do you do it and why you should care? This course will change your focus from…
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Enable Verbose Debug Mode for TFS Build vNext
Here’s a “hidden in plain sight” quick tip: how to turn on verbose debugging mode for your Team Foundation Server vNext Build. The short answer is that you need to set the ‘system.debug’ variable to true for your build. You can set this to true for a single instance of the build or you can change…
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Edit a Connection String from a TFS vNext Build
In my last post, I talked about how to create an ASP.NET Web Application that’s easy to deploy from your Team Foundation Server vNext Build (TFS Build vNext). Well, part of the pain of deploying an ASP.NET Web Application (ASP.NET MVC or ASP.NET Web Forms) from a build is dealing with database connection strings. So…
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An ASP.NET MVC Site That’s Easy to Deploy from a TFS Build
By this point, you’ve probably heard that Team Foundation Server 2015 has a completely new build system. As part of it, it organizese and compiles the code slightly differently than the old XAML-based TFS Build system. First off, when you run a vNext build on a build server, you got four folders: a, b, s, and…
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TfsUtility: Import / Export Build & Release Definitions + more
I’ve been doing a bunch of work with the new version of Build and Release Management in Team Foundation Server 2015 (TFS2015) lately and discovered a handful of things that I wish that I could do from the command line. Specifically, I wished that I could import and export my build definitions and release definitions. Well, a couple…