How to configure VS solution to use tfs vnext build with release management

Question

Q. How can I setup our config/transforms to get release management to work in the example way?

I'm trying to get release management to work in the way all the videos seem to show. The same build progressing through environments going through build --> Dev/Staging --> Production.

It's making me step back a little and question the way we do our configurations in Visual Studio solutions (and our git flow branch process). I think the way we use the configurations is making things more difficult further down the line with the build and then release.

Configurations

We currently use the two default configurations, debug & release.

• We tend to use the debug build on our Dev (contains the dev database connection string & other app settings transforms). This is what we deploy to 'dev'.
• Then we also have the release configuration with the production transforms in. This is what we deploy to 'Production'.

How can I setup our config/transforms to get release management to work in the example way?

Answer 1

What you provide in the screenshot is a Overview of releases. Which is used to track a release in Microsoft Release Management. Based on a release name and links.

The Overview page shows a list of release definitions. Each one is shown as a series of environments, with the name of the release and the date or time it was started. The color of the heading and the icon in each environment indicate the current status of the release. The color scheme is the same as in the Releases page.

You just need to follow the provided starter deployment templates or you can also create your own templates for your project.

Back to the screenshot, there are just the environments in a release build definition. You can add the need environment in the definitions.

After that you will view the same thing in the overview just like the example:

For your situation, you can created two separate release definition with two build definition based on the both configurations. Moreover,there has been a very detailed document in MSDN, including setup, configurations, manage release, deploy, you can have a systematic understanding.

Answer 2

One option: Build both configurations. Publish both configurations as artifacts in your build.

In your release definition, deploy the appropriate configuration from the linked artifacts.

Another option: Don't do compile-time configuration transforms and instead do deployment-time configuration.