Excluding subfolder from triggering Continuous Integration build in TFS?

Question

I have a project that has a folder with some files that are getting worked on frequently but that do not affect the build. Whenever we have one of these files checked in, the entire solution builds. For reasons I won't get into, we cannot separate these files from the project - What I'm interested in doing is either

1. Exclude this folder from being monitored by CI, or
2. Change from CI trigger to Manually triggered on the build definition and roll my own change detection that monitors folders I specify

I don't know that either of these are possible - any guidance would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Add the folder to the workspace mapping as "cloaked". They won't be downloaded during the build process, and they won't trigger CI.

Answer 2

Any checkin with the string

***NO_CI***

in the checkin comment will not trigger a build.

Also, there is a called ".tfignore" that lets you list files to be excluded. I have web config in there, for instance. But you can put one in any subdirectory and finely control what is checked in and out.

Not quite an answer, but maybe it will help.