Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build [Paperback]

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi (Author), William Bartholomew (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0735645248 | ISBN-13: 978-0735645240 | Publication Date: January 11, 2011 | Edition: Second Edition

As software complexity increases, proper build practices become ever more important. This essential reference—fully updated for Visual Studio 2010—drills inside MSBuild and shows you how to maximize your control over the build and deployment process. Learn how to customize and extend build processes with MSBuild—and scale them to the team, product, or enterprise level with Team Foundation Build.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi is a consultant, trainer, and senior software developer who has designed large-scale, distributed applications using a variety of programming languages and platforms, including Microsoft .NET, C++, and Java. This is his third book on MSBuild.

William Bartholomew is a software development engineer at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA. He is a member of the Developer Division Engineering Systems group, which includes the build lab responsible for building and shipping Microsoft Visual Studio®.

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; Second Edition edition (January 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735645248
• ISBN-13: 978-0735645240
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Design Tools & Techniques
  • #80 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > Visual Basic
  • #92 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > C#

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must have" for any budding build master., February 26, 2009

By 

Jeremy K. Jenkins (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (Pro-Developer) (Paperback)

I've been working with MSBuild now for about a year and have learnt it solely from other people feeding me strips of information here and there. Recently I have been working on an enterprise project that requires the utmost attention concerning automated builds.

I searched for anything on MSBuild and came across this gem. Even though I have decent experience in MSBuild I read this book from front to back twice over and was exceptionally impressed with how this book was put together. The examples were very straight forward and understandable even to a few of my friends who have no idea about MSBuild. I feel that so long as the reader has an understanding of XML, then they can understand the examples in this book. The chapter 1 quick starts are greating for getting straight into the basics and getting a great feel for the direction the books takes you in.


There is some fantastic advice and guidance for customizing MSBuilds, batch building and incremental building and there are 3 chapters dedicated to Team Foundation Build which were highly educational for me in not only a gathering a better understanding of the build process in Team Foundation but also a stronger understanding of how to utilize Build Agents, retention policies, triggers, and unit testing within Team Foundation Build.

This book quite simply in my humble opinion, is a "must have" for anybody that is serious in learning the art of build mastering and is a "must have" for build masters as an A+ reference.

Kudos to Sayed and William for writing this much needed gem. Well done.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on the subject, hands down., April 8, 2009

By 

Red M. All (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (Pro-Developer) (Paperback)

This book is outstanding. A literal step-by-step walk through of MSBuild and Team Build. I have been working with these products for almost a year and learned them on my own, via various websites, blogs, msdn walk-throughs, etc. There are a myriad of sources with bits and pieces of the information you need, and I feel this book pulls them all together in one very well written book.

This is the best source to get going from beginner to intermediate level with MSBuild and Team Build. Obviously you need to dive into the products and get your feet wet intensely to gain expert knowledge of the two. However, this book takes you leaps and bounds into an advanced level of knowledge. The msdn topics have everything else you need as a reference beyond this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is both new or experienced with MSBuild or Team Build. Great work!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The missing MSBuild manual, June 26, 2009

By 

Daniel Moseley "danmose" (redmond, wa usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (Pro-Developer) (Paperback)

I'm a developer on MSBuild; Sayed wrote this book with our encouragement, and we reviewed it for accuracy and completeness, so I can recommend it. The documentation for MSBuild in 2.0 and 3.5 was not great; I consider this something like the missing manual. Unfortunately there aren't many other MSBuild books; fortunately Sayed did a good job on this one.

We're fixing a lot of what's "missing" in MSBuild in the upcoming version 4.0 -- I hope Sayed can do a 2nd edition when that comes out. Plus, our docs should be better then :-)

Dan