What's the best way to get TFS to output each project to its own directory?

Question

I\'m putting a large codebase into Team Foundation Server. I would like the build process to create a \"ready to deploy\" build of our projects.

The normal way we\'v

Answer 1

By default each project file (*.csproj, *.vbproj, etc.) specifies a default output directory (which is usually bin\Debug, bin\Release, etc.). Team Build actually overrides this so that you're not at the whim of what properties the developer sets in the project file but also so that Team Build can make assumptions about where the outputs are located.

The easiest way to override this behaviour is to set CustomizableOutDir to true in the SolutionToBuild item group as shown here:

  
    CustomizableOutDir=true
  

This will make the drop folder structure roughly match what you would get locally if you built the solution.

This method is definitely preferable to overriding the Core* targets which can cause upgrade issues.