Incremental build and release with multiple build agents

Question

I am setting up automated build and release definitions for my solution in Visual Studio Team Services.

We use a hosted agent pool, and there are multiple agents within the pool. Because the solution is going to grow very large, I would like to make my build and release process incremental so that I do not have to deploy all components every time I build and release.

How do I set up incremental build and release when multiple agents are used? I understand that one of the steps to set up an incremental build is to disable automatic clean-up of the build folder, but how will this work with multiple agents?

For example, if build #1 occurs on agent #1, and build #2 occurs on agent #2, how will it detect the files that have changed/been added from build #1 on agent #1?

I am first looking for help to understand this issue conceptually, and then I am looking to figure out how to apply the solution within Visual Studio Team Services.

Answer 1

With hosted build agents, you can’t build incrementally, because all files will be cleaned after building.

With private build agents, by default (check the files in obj folder), you can’t build incrementally for different build agents, unless you change the project file (compare the files in same directory).

For more information about building incrementally, you can refer to How to: Build Incrementally.