team foundation server custom hosted build controller for selenium tests

Question

I am currently using the Team Foundation Hosted Build Server. I have this setup with my azure cloud service so that when I commit a code change, the hosted build controller will build my changes and then the changes are deployed to a staging environment in the cloud service. During the build, I also have a set of automated tests that are run using NUnit.

This is all working fine until the Selenium tests start. Since IE and firefox are not deployed on the TFS hosted build server, my tests fail. Currently the TFS hosted build server is a VM image designed by microsoft.

Is there any easy way to designate a custom VM image which would have browsers installed so I could run these automated tests every time I check in a code change? Or when the hosted build server is created, auto install the browsers so they are available for testing?

Thanks!

TWilly

Answer 1

I ended up moving away from the TFS hosted build controllers since you can't customize them.

I was able to create an azure VM with windows 2012 server installed on it. I installed TFS server and was able to link my TFS account to my on-premise TFS build controller.

Since I am using the azure VM, I am able to customize it, so I was able to download all my browsers, install Selenium IE driver and get the builds to work.

I am still working on how to automate the starting of the VM and taking it down when not in use so I don't get charged for compute hours when it's not in use, but it is nice having it always up so that it can automatically build after a code check-in.