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I am very new in TFS, need to implement CICD using TFS 2017 and its build and release feature, when I tried to run build after creating build definition, I got error like no agent found, I googled and found how to configure agent, but I have logical confusion in my mind as below:

  1. How Agent works with TFS 2017?
  2. Where process of CI will be run on Agent or on TFS server?
  3. Where I need to have msbuild ? where my built code will be placed?
  4. What other dependencies would be there on Agent machine?

all question might be silly but as I have worked with Jenkins and Git, i dont have knowledge of Microsoft technologies, and I can't find well documents for the same.

Heena Patel
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1 Answers1

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  1. How Agent works with TFS 2017?

In short to build with TFS, you need to Deploy an agent, in the agent machine you need to install the proper build components/SDKs accordingly based on your project.

Create a build definition. Once a build is triggered , the sources will be downloaded from the TFS repository to the agent machine and then build in the agent machine.

Related documents : Agent pools and queues; Build and Release Agents; Build definition options

  1. Where process of CI will be run on Agent or on TFS server?

You can eanble the CI (turn on the Continuous integration trigger) in build definition. See Configure continuous integration for details. Thus the build will automatically be triggered once changes are checked in.

Related documents: A quick introduction to CI/CD ; Build and release

  1. Where I need to have msbuild ? where my built code will be placed?

For vNext build, it's task based build system. You can define your build definition based on the tasks. See Build and release tasks .

e.g.: You can use MSBuild or Visual Studio Build task, you can specify the MSBuild Arguments as needed.

You can use the utility task: Copy and Publish Build Artifacts and Publish Build Artifacts to specify where the built code will be placed. (Artifact Type : Server/File share path)

  1. What other dependencies would be there on Agent machine?

Refer to the answer for the first question.

Andy Li-MSFT
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  • Hey Andy, about question no- 3, I mean , where published code(built code) will be take place- on agent machine or on TFS server machine? about physical location – Heena Patel Feb 14 '18 at 10:45
  • @HeenaPatel By default (Artifact Type : `Server`) ,it's in TFS server machine. However you can change the type to `File share path`, then you can publish the build to any shared location. (with UNC path specified, e.g. `\\sharefolder`) – Andy Li-MSFT Feb 14 '18 at 13:01
  • Thanks a lot for your help :) – Heena Patel Feb 15 '18 at 04:45