TFS integration

I went through multiple Octopus documentation. I found that I need to have TFS build server running for Octopus to do automatic deployment on TFS check-ins.

Is build server a hard requirement for automatic deployment from Visual Studio Team Service or TFS Online? Is there any workaround for that?

Are instructions on following page for TFS Build server.

Thanks for your help!

Hi Khuram,

Thanks for reaching out. You don’t need to have a build server to be able to use Octopus. Build server only take care of building/compiling your app, while Octopus only takes care of deploying the already built/compiled app.

That said, you definitely want to have both in your application lifecycle. Having both tools allows you to have a fully automated continuos integration lifecycle, which basically means that as soon as a dev checks in code, that’ll trigger a build in your build server, and as soon as this one ends a deployment will get triggered in Octopus. This is the end goal of the whole Build Server + Octopus story.

Is there any workaround for that? For sure! You can compile your code using MSBuild in your local machine and build a Nuget package out of it, and then manually push that package to your repository, where Octopus will grab it and deploy it to your machines.

Hope that helps,
Dalmiro

:wink: do you want to do it like that … hell no :wink:

To add more context to our friend @fransen’s reply: You definitely don’t want to develop your app without a build server.

I was thinking about this ticket during the weekend, and I realized I should have mentioned something: You don’t necessarily need TFS. You could use for example TeamCity, which is at the moment our favorite build server solution. TeamCity also has a great integration with Octopus, and it proved to be much more flexible than TFS.

  • You dont need a build server to use Octopus.
  • You definitely want to integrate a build server with Octopus to get the full CI experience.
  • You can pretty much use any build server technology along with Octopus. Teamcity, TFS and Jenkins are our favorite (in that order).

Cheers,
Dalmiro