Setting up Jetbrains TeamCity for CI with Team Foundation Server

If you need to begin experimenting with Continuous Integration builds without having a Team Foundation Server Build server available, Jetbrains TeamCity is a great Continuous Integration alternative to TFS Build.

One example of where Jetbrains TeamCity would be a good alternative for performing CI Builds is if your company/organization is not yet ready to upgrade their existing version of TFS to TFS 2013 but you still want to utilize Visual Studio 2013 for your CI Builds.

You can get the latest version of Jetbrains TeamCity here (currently v. 9.0): http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/



Well, now on to the fun stuff of actually setting up and configuring your Jetbrains TeamCity server:

1. Install Jetbrains TeamCity
2. If you are planning on using IIS or TFS on the same server, configure Jetbrains TeamCity to run on a port other than 80 or 8080
3. Once TeamCity is up and running, you can begin configuring your TeamCity installation for CI Builds.
4. Log into TeamCity with your user name and password
5. Create a new TeamCity Project
6. Create a new build configuration
7. You will now see a series of build configuration settings that you will have to complete presented in a Wizard-style navigation view.
8. Enter General Settings
9. Enter VCS Settings
10. After entering VCS Settings, Create and attach new VCS Root
11. Enter the relevant information for your TFS instance
12. Create a Build Step using Visual Studio as your build runner.  You can create as many build steps as you need and specify the order of the steps (similar to a TFS Build Workflow).  
13. For setting up Continuous Integration builds, you will need to specify a Build Trigger.  CI Builds will generally use a VCS Trigger that is triggered on each source control check-in.
14. If you need to pass any parameters to your build, you can configure these in your Build Parameters.
15. That is all!  You can then either run your Builds manually by clicking on the Run button in TeamCity or simply verify that your builds are triggered by the next check-in into TFS.