Team Foundation Services 2015 build tools

I have spent many years working with various build tools, with a particular emphasis on creating continuous integration (CI) environments. I have worked with Nant, MSBUILD, Cruisecontrol.NET, TeamCity, Git and Subversion to name a few. I have configured automated tests as part of the build process using Nunit and automated the signing and packaging of an Android app, all using various build and CI tools.

So I have a pretty good understanding of the build process and the tools and environments that support it. For this reason I haven't used the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) features found within Team Foundation Services (TFS) as I haven't found them to be best-of-breed. However, that was then, and this is now. I've recently been using the latest build features in TFS 2015 and have to admit that I'm very impressed with them.

They are very much improved from previous versions of TFS. One of my biggest criticisms was that TFS only really worked within the Microsoft build tools ecosystem, and didn't play particularly well with other build tools and systems. That's all changed in TFS 2015 though. The build tools in TFS 2015 now support practically any build tool or platform you care to mention. Git, Maven, Nant, Android, iOS, scripting languages etc. The list of supported tools and platforms is extensive and impressive.

I managed to get a complete build setup and configured with ease. This included a full build, continuous integration triggering from TFS and a deployment to our development server. From code being checked-in to being deployed on the test server is all automatic and takes just a few minutes to run.

This is an ideal build solution for anyone looking to automate and simplify their build process and which is capable of supporting many different build tools and platforms. The Rolls Royce build solution is still TeamCity, but this an impressive build platform nonetheless and one that I am happy to keep using.