Systems Engineering

Team Foundation Server (TFS) does not ship out of the box with a Continuous Integration capability. Mitch Denny and others at Radify have tried to address this issue with smething called TFS Integrator.

Continuous Integration (CI) is the process of continually scanning the source code repository for changes, and, once they have been detected automatically kicking off a build process to verify that the code compiles successfully. In many instances teams will tag on a round of build verification tests to ensure that not only does the code compile, but that it doesn’t catch on fire when you try to run it (smoke tests).

The software uses a TFS “event service” to plug into in order to listen for events in the source code repository. “The way it works is that whenever you do something significant in Team Foundation Server, such as checking in a file, that TFS sub-system notifies the TFS eventing system which then broadcasts that message to any subscribers. This is how you get an e-mail when another developer checks in some code,” writes Denny. Read more on TFS Integrator.