Powershell: Queuing Multiple TFS Builds

Problem

I needed to automate a full deployment of all my services, databases and the client that consumed them frequently.

Context

I am using an on premise installation of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2012 and Visual Studio 2015. I needed to leverage multiple builds since msbuild arguments (the ones that you use to automatically publish/deploy) apply to every project/solution being built. This can potentially lead to multiple different builds.

Solution

Fortunately, this can be accomplished using PowerShell. TFS provides a good useful well-documented interface.

	#
	# TFS.psm1
	#
	Function QueueBuilds {
	param($serverName, $teamProject, [string[]]$buildDefinitionNames)
	[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client")
	[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client")
	$serverName=$serverName
	$teamProject=$teamProject
	$tfs = [Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TeamFoundationServerFactory]::GetServer($serverName)
	$buildserver = $tfs.GetService([Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client.IBuildServer])
	foreach($buildDefinitionName in $buildDefinitionNames) {
	Write-Output "Queuing build $buildDefinitionName"
	$buildDefinition = $buildserver.GetBuildDefinition($teamProject, $buildDefinitionName)
	$buildRequest = $buildDefinition.CreateBuildRequest();
	Write-Output $buildRequest
	$result = $buildserver.QueueBuild($BuildReq)
	}
	}
	Export-ModuleMember -Function 'QueueBuilds'

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TFS.psm1

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	#
	# Queue Dev Builds
	#
	Import-Module $PSScriptRoot\TFS\TFS.psm1
	$buildNames =
	"Service1 – Continuous",
	"Service1.DB – Continuous",
	"Service2 – Continuous",
	"Service2.DB – Continuous",
	"Service3 – Continuous",
	"Client – Continuous"
	QueueBuilds -serverName "http://tfs:8080/tfs/TeamProjectCollection" -teamProject "TeamProject" -buildDefinitionNames $buildNames

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Queue.Dev.Builds.ps1

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Below are some helpful references that I found on my way to the above solution.

Update

I recently started working with a different TFS instance and version only to discover the script produced the below error. I have updated it accordingly.

References

1. TFS Build API by Example #1: Queue a build.
2. Queuing TFS Build from Powershell Script Which is Called from TFS Build
3. Queuing a build in PowerShell
4. relative path in Import-Module
5. Powershell import-module doesn’t find modules
6. How to set a custom tfs build parameter using powershell