Hi,

I've got a complicated question, which I'm not even sure can be answered here, let alone even answered.

At the moment, we have a Guidance Package, which isdesigned to generate code from the content of what is essentially an XML file sitting inside an relatively empty solution.

It generates several projects (WCF service), containing source code, to be compiled.

At this stage, it's usually tested, and then deployed.

What I'd like to do, is, instead of keeping this a fully manual process, is be able pass the solution and the XML file through TFS, and have it generate the projects during an automated build, and then deploy.

At the moment, I'm stuck at the first step in how to reduce anyGuidance Package to a something that can be used by TFS.

Any comments, hints, suggestions would be appreciated.

Reagrds,

Chris.

(I have not posed this to the TFS forum as yet)

Hi Chris,

First, don't post your question to a TFS forum, they won't be able to help with this for sure

You can't run GAX outside of Visual Studio, as the only available host for GAX is a Visual Studio host. That means, you can't automate the execution of recipes, and things like that without resorting to a running instance of Visual Studio.

Based on the above this means you can't have a command-line automated build using just msbuild that for example launches a recipe and produces some output (well technically you may be able to do so by resorting to do a LOT of stuff (eg. programatically launching a hidden VS instance, automating its, programatically enable a package, and play with the UI, etc, tec, etc) which isn't suitable for an automated build process and will be a really fragile solution).

Sorry,
-Victor.

Hi Chris,

First, don't post your question to a TFS forum, they won't be able to help with this for sure

You can't run GAX outside of Visual Studio, as the only available host for GAX is a Visual Studio host. That means, you can't automate the execution of recipes, and things like that without resorting to a running instance of Visual Studio.

Based on the above this means you can't have a command-line automated build using just msbuild that for example launches a recipe and produces some output (well technically you may be able to do so by resorting to do a LOT of stuff (eg. programatically launching a hidden VS instance, automating its, programatically enable a package, and play with the UI, etc, tec, etc) which isn't suitable for an automated build process and will be a really fragile solution).

Sorry,
-Victor.