Upgrading from XAML to Build 2015 with minimal changes

XAML builds on Visual Studio Team Services will be deprecated in September 2016. While support for XAML builds seems to stay around on-premise for a little while longer, it’s time to upgrade to Build 2015.

You may have invested quite a bit in the XAML build system in the past, but as long as your changes have been mostly limited to custom MsBuild tasks and targets, Powershell or batch scripts, then upgrading to Build 2015 is (almost) a piece of cake.

In this series I’ll go through the basic settings in the XAML Default Template and I’ll explain how to transfer each setting over to the new system. There are still a few things which are not possible in the new system, such as configuring Gated Checkins for TFVC, but almost every other setting can be converted over.

Before going over each setting, I’ll assume that you’ve installed at least one build agent, or are using Visual Studio Team Services with the Hosted Build option.

• TFVC: Configuring your repository, clean workspace, labeling and triggers
• Accessing multiple TFVC repositories in a single build definition.
• Git: Configuring your repository, clean workspace, labeling and triggers
• Configuring which solution to build, platforms and configurations, clean build
• Building multiple combinations of platform and configurations
• Configuring the output location and publication of artifacts
• Mimic the XAML build’s Output Location option
• Configuring custom MsBuild Arguments, Code Analysis and pre-/post-build scripts
• Configuring test runs, custom test runners and pre-/post-test scripts
• Configuring publication of Source and Symbols
• Selecting the agent to run your test on
• Configuring build number format and work item creation/association
• Configuring your retention policy

Other tips and tricks

• Turn on diagnostic logging to help you debug your new Build
• Updating your TFVC repository from your build