tfsdeployer continuous build

Question

We have a tfs 2010 setup with some deployment machines running tfs deployer to automate the deployment of our builds.

I would like to make a sort of "continous deploy" to one of the deployment machines, that simply triggers when a build is made (on every build that completes).

Tfs deployer seems to work only on quality changes, not on build events.

Is there a way I can make this work?

I have tried setting NewQuality to "", but this doesnt seem to trigger.

<Mapping BuildDefinitionPattern="Main" Computer="DEPLOY001" OriginalQuality="*"
    NewQuality="" RunnerType="PowerShell" Script="PublishToLocalhost.ps1" 
    NotificationAddress="[email protected]"  Queue="Main" />

Answer 1

TFSDeployer is not a continuous deployment tool, but rather an automated deployment tool and only listens to build quality change events. The idea is that the build runs, you confirm it's OK, and then manually trigger the deployment by setting the build quality to something like "Deploy to UAT" for example. In your example above you would have "Deploy to UAT" in the NewQuality attribute.

If you want a continuous deployment process you should look at customising the normal build process to automatically deploy to your environment(s) after the usual compilation/testing process has completed. Alternatively fork or contribute to the TFSDeployer project and add a feature to listen to build completion events and deploy to specific environments when they complete.

Answer 2

For those of you interested in the solution we opted for its here. We set the build quality upon test completion in our build template to "Initial Test Passed"