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Define Your Build Process

After you establish a build system (as described in Configure Your Build System), you are almost ready to start to use Team Foundation Build to compile your code, run your tests, and perform many other important functions. The next step is to develop a build process, which contains your instructions about which code projects to compile, what actions trigger a build, what tests to run, and any other procedures required by your team.

Common tasks

Supporting content


Create a Basic Build Definition

Define a Build Using the Default Template

Edit a Build Definition

Delete a Build Definition

Define a build process to support continuous integration.


Build and Deploy Continuously

Define a Build Process to Support Continuous Integration

Use the Builds Check-In Policy to Minimize Code Churn after Breaks to Continuous Builds

Keep your team from "breaking the build."



You can also use the Builds check-in policy as a tool to limit additional changes to your code base until a continuous build break is fixed.

Define a Gated Check-In Build Process to Validate Changes

Define a build process with automatic triggers. You can manually queue a build whenever necessary, but your team’s needs will, in most cases, be best met by a build process that starts a build automatically when one or more criteria are met. For example, you can configure your build process to start a build automatically whenever code is checked in or at the same time or times every day.

Specify Build Triggers and Reasons

Define your build process to load useful data. For example, you can automatically embed the name of the build definition and the date on which the build was run into the name of each completed build.

Work with Build Numbers

Define how workspaces are created. The build agent follows your specifications when it creates a build workspace to facilitate downloading the files (such as source code files) that it works on. You should define this workspace so that your build process runs efficiently.

Work with Build Workspaces

Publish the symbol data in your PDB files to a SymStore symbol store. If you publish this data, your team can debug code with IntelliTrace.

Publish Symbol Data

Control the verbosity of build information. It is often useful to get detailed information about a completed build, but a build process that logs too much information overloads your team members and your servers.

Manage Build Information and Control Verbosity

Define a build process that runs tests and to analyzes the impact of code changes on your tests. For example, you can define a build process to serve as your team’s regularly scheduled build verification test (BVT) run.

Use Your Build System to Work with Tests


Develop a Customized Build Process

Upgrade MSBuild builds from previous versions of Team Foundation Build. You can use existing MSBuild files by using the Upgrade Template.

Use Legacy MSBuild Builds Using the Upgrade Template