Third-party DLLs with TFS build server

4
votes

I'm just setting up an automated build for the first time in my Team Foundation Server (TFS)/Visual Studio 2010 enviroment.

It's a WPF 4 application that uses the Entprise library and has also some components that have been built in Expression Blend.

The application builds OK inside Visual Studio. However, it fails to build using the build server.

For example:

The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\Expression\Blend.NETFramework\v4.0\Microsoft.Expression.Blend.WPF.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

Do I have to install third-party DLLs on the build server? Or is having the DLLs checked into TFS enough?

1
tfsbuild

1 Answers

6
votes

I always create a third-party DLLs folder as part of my solution (at the solution root called Libs) and have projects reference them from that folder. That way, builds will work with no extra effort, locally on a get latest on a new machine and on the build server.

Also, because third party DLLs are part of your SCC trunk, when required you can version them in branches.