Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build

Customizing the Build Process

In this section, we’ll look at each of these phases, the targets they include, and how they can be customized by setting MSBuild properties, adding items to item groups, and overriding targets. The majority of these customizations apply equally to the end-to-end and desktop build processes but where there is a difference it will be highlighted.

The correct way to customize the build is by adding the customizations to the TFSBuild.proj project in the build definition’s configuration folder in version control. These customizations can also be refactored into their own project file as discussed in Sharing Customizations between Build Definitions in Chapter 12.

Note

You should never edit the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets ...