How do I use Team Build/Team Explorer

The long and short of the whole problem is this:

I can't find Team Build.

I have Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite installed. Team System is all there. I need to be able to set up an automated build, involving several different build projects, need support for local builds, and I need to have logging done by Team Build (most importantly it must record any errors encountered during the build process down to the line of code). But I can't do any of that because I have been unable to find a way to open Team build, or access its functionality through Visual Studio 2005. Despite the fact that it shows up as an installed component in Add/Remove programs, has it's own directory full of installed components, and can detect already installed components when I run the installer again (it knows that it's already installed and ask's if this is a repair/re-install operation or an uninstallation), there doesn't seem to be any exicutable, gui, command line prompt, or otherwise ANY means of reaching Team Builds functionality.

MSDN has nothing and Google can provide many advertisiments for Team build but nothing that can tell how to even start it up! The walkthroughs either skip that first crucial step or will tell me to use menu options that don't exist inside of Visual Studio 2005 (MSDN did this in a walkthrough). I even searched over my system, and while I could find a bunch of registr entries, the installation files, and the directory that the installed team build exists in, indicating that Team Build is indeed there and existing I couldn't find any way to run it.

No one else in my development team can find any way to access Team Build or it's functionality either.

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How do I use Team Build/Team Explorer

EJaloustre

Hi,

AFAIK in order to use Team Build you will need to setup Team Foundation Server, and have created a Team Project before you can use Team Build. If you don't have TFS or Team Project you won't see these menu items.

The "Team Build" software you have installed on your system is the build service, i.e when you're setting up a build in a Team Project you specify one of the computers that has "Team Build" installed to do the actual building. Team build on it's own doesn't do anything.

Also you're probably better off asking your question in here:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx ForumID=481&SiteID=1
Helio Gomes
I should also mention that during my search I did find a few bits of information that could BECOME usefull if I could run team build.

I found that I need to create a build TYPE before I can run team build, and that the build type is actually an XML document. I also found a wizard for generating these XML documents, as well as learning the fact that once created these build types have to be edited through their raw XML source code.

Haven't found a way to give that XML document/script to team build though. Even the wizard for generating build types wasn't where the MSDN walkthrough said it would be.
Jutsin Leung
Thanks,
Thats actually really useful to know. I guess that meens team builder is kind-of like a spy ware or daemon then. Of course that's the ugliest way to describe it. From your post then, I guess Team Build is just supposed to pull files off of developer computers so that whoever is running the Foundation Server can get what they need to run the build. I'll send further questions to the part of the forum you linked to.
How do I use Team Build/Team Explorer

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