Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Build Extensions

The Team Foundation Build Extensions provide the ability to execute Ant or Maven 2 builds from Team Foundation Server 2013 and publish the results of the build along with any associated JUnit test results back to Team Foundation Server.  This release is compatible with Team Foundation Server 2013 only. For Team Foundation Server 2005, Team Foundation Server 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2010 see previous release here.

Prerequisites

You must have the following installed on the same server that is hosting the Team Foundation Build Agent:

• Java JDK (the latest one available from your JDK vendor is recommended)
• Ant (if Ant support is required).
• Maven 2 (if Maven 2 support is required)
• Maven 3 (if Maven 3 support is required)

In addition, you should configure the appropriate environment variables (i.e. JAVA_HOME, ANT_HOME, M2_HOME) as per the relevant install guidance for Ant and Maven.

Installation

The Team Foundation Server 2013 Build Extensions should be installed on the Team Foundation Build Agent machine.  As part of installation the following components are installed:

• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Extensions.Ant.targets – Ant targets which extend the default Team Foundation Build process to add typical build functionality for an Ant based project including JUnit test publishing.
• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Extensions.Maven2.targets – Maven targets which extend the default Team Foundation Build process to add typical build functionality for a Maven based project including JUnit test publishing of tests executed by the Surefire plug-in.
• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Extensions.Tasks.dll – MSBuild tasks required to execute an Ant or Maven build and publish the results along with JUnit test results.
• Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Extensions.Activities.dll - Windows Workflow 4.0 activities required to execute an Ant or Maven build and publish the results along with JUnit test results.
• JUnit Transformation stylesheets – XML Transformation stylesheets to convert an aggregated set of JUnit test results into the TRX file format used by the corresponding version of Team Foundation Server.

Note: The publishing of JUnit test results to tfspreview.com is not supported however this functionality is currently in development.

Usage

Once you have installed the build extensions on the necessary build agent machines, you must create a build definition which makes use of them.  The easiest way to do this is to use Team Explorer Everywhere for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 to create the build definition.

When talking with Team Foundation Server 2013, an MSBuild based Ant or Maven build definition will make use of the UpgradeTemplate workflow process to execute a TFSBuild.proj script which actually calls Ant or Maven. This allows the entire process to be easily edited from Eclipse or from the command line.