CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netbuildcontinuous-integrationteamcity
lysergic-acid
lysergic-acid

Reputation: 20050

Build or Rebuild on the build server (CI server)

I am running TeamCity to build a .NET project (several projects to be more exact).

Should i be using Rebuild target or Build target?

I would like to minimize the build time, while not producing any newer versions of projects that haven't changed.

Is this safe practice to use "Build" target? what if the previous project outputs were erased? how do i verify that i can be doing this safely?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 1459

Answers (4)

Ross Patterson
Ross Patterson

Reputation: 9570

You should always perform rebuild operations on Continuous Integration servers.

Contrary to what you may read, it is possible to have leakage from a prior build into the current one. The leakage is almost never the result of failing to compile source code to binaries, but depending on which tool you're using to perform the build, there may be non-code files that don't get copied over because they already exist in the output directory, or deleted files that aren't removed from it.

For similar reasons, if you can afford the cost of execution time, you should also always clean the source tree before the build. Either destroy it and check out a clean copy, or revert any changes and delete any files not under source control. If you don't do this on every build, at least do it on "idle time" builds (e.g., overnight or weekend builds), and on the builds you intend to actually deliver to customers or deploy into production (and ideally into QA).

Upvotes: 2

Ludwo
Ludwo

Reputation: 6173

You should use Build to build your project incrementally. It is completely safe.

Upvotes: 1

Femaref
Femaref

Reputation: 61427

Build produces everything needed to run the project, keeping non-changed assemblies. Rebuild forces a complete build of any assembly involved. Unless for specific circumstances (version number, dependent process on something), it is safe to use build to minize time spent.

Upvotes: 1

Lasse V. Karlsen
Lasse V. Karlsen

Reputation: 391276

You should use rebuild if you need to rebuild all the projects, for instance in order to get coherent timestamps or version numbers (though usually, a change in a linked AssemblyInfo.cs will trigger a build as well.)

Build is completely safe even if the build output from a previous build is gone, or even if the build happens to be done on a new build agent which has no build output. In that case, all necessary projects will be built.

However, you might have custom MSBuild steps in your sln/csproj files that depends on a (Re)build, in which case you need to be more careful, but other than that, go for Build if you want to.

Upvotes: 7

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