Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 5 Release Candidate<\/h3>\n
At the same time, we are providing a release candidate for VS and TFS 2013 Update 5.\u00a0 For the most part these releases have bug fixes but they also have some features\/changes that help with the migration to 2015.\u00a0 The best example are some changes that make VS 2013 work better when a Team Project on TFS 2015 is renamed.<\/p>\n
Useful links:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Download Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 RC<\/a><\/li>\n
- Download Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 5 RC<\/a><\/li>\n
- Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 5 RC Release Notes<\/a><\/li>\n
- Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 5 RC KB Article<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
We also plan to produce a new VS 2012 Update closer to the VS 2015 RTM.\u00a0 Stay tuned for more on that later.<\/p>\n
Please submit bugs through Connect<\/a><\/span>, suggestions on UserVoice<\/a> and quick thoughts via Send-a-Smile<\/a> in the Visual Studio IDE for both the 2015 RC and the 2013 Update 5 RC.<\/p>\n
The rest of this post is mostly going to talk about new features in Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Online.\u00a0 For more on Visual Studio, you can also check out Soma\u2019s blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Visual Studio Code<\/h3>\n
Perhaps the most surprising announcement we made at \/\/Build this week is the new Visual Studio Code<\/a> cross platform editor\/development tool.\u00a0 It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux and supports many languages.\u00a0 The most impressive thing about it is the integrated debugger experience in a lightweight cross platform editor.\u00a0 Check it out.<\/p>\n
Team Project Rename<\/h3>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/6371.clip_image002_49B248E6.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n6,156 votes and 178 comments later, it\u2019s here (both on VSO and in the TFS 2015 RC).\u00a0 I know it\u2019s been a long time coming and I appreciate everyone who has been both patient and persistent.<\/p>\n
Read my blog post on Team Project rename<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n
Build V.Next<\/h3>\n
Our next version of the build system is available in the RC and is in private preview on VSO.\u00a0 It\u2019s been in private preview on VSO for a couple of months now and Chris wrote a blog post<\/a> highlighting some of the key features: Easy customization, Cross platform, Real-time build status, Build definition diffing and auditing, Build.vnext is still in private preview but will be entering public preview shortly.\u00a0 If you want access before then, you can send me mail at bharry at Microsoft dot com.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/6242.image_thumb_6063E8E3.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/2465.clip_image002_thumb_7FA68FB6.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWe\u2019ve continued to work on it and have some cool new things to share.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve added support for:<\/p>\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- Auto updating build agents<\/strong> \u2013 There\u2019s no need to run around and update all your build agents any more.\u00a0 The server\/service will automatically distribute agent updates.\u00a0 This won\u2019t change any of the tools (compilers, etc) just the build automation agent.<\/li>\n
- Seamless integration with XAML builds<\/strong> \u2013 Build.vnext definitions and the earlier XAML build definitions now share the same Build tab and can coexist happily.<\/li>\n
- Build Java projects<\/strong> \u2013 Ant, Maven, Gradle.<\/li>\n
- Run unit tests and publish results<\/strong> \u2013 We now have a task to run unit tests using just about any framework you like \u2013 NUnit, MSTest, JUnit, etc. and publish the test results back to VSO\/TFS and include them in the build report.<\/li>\n
- Support for Xamarin<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019ve added support for building Xamarin apps for both iOS and Android.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve added support for running tests on Xamarin\u2019s Test Cloud as part of the build.\u00a0 Shortly, we will also enable publishing the Test Cloud test results back to VSO\/TFS.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Deployment<\/h3>\n
We\u2019ve been working to more loosely couple our deployment automation capabilities with our Release Management feature.\u00a0 In this change we\u2019ve combined our build automation pipeline and deployment pipeline, using the same extensibility model for both.\u00a0 That means the same deployment tasks can be seamlessly used as part of a simple build\/deploy workflow or as part of a larger release management workflow with multiple deployments, validations, approvals, etc.\u00a0 This greatly simplifies our story and improves flexibility.<\/p>\n
Work we\u2019ve done in deployment includes:<\/p>\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- Deploy to cloud or on premises<\/strong> \u2013 You can deploy applications both to cloud and on premises environments.<\/li>\n
- Auto-provision cloud environments<\/strong> \u2013 Using Azure, you can automatically provision the hardware as part of the deployment process.\u00a0 Ultimately we\u2019ll enable this on prem as well by bringing it together with our existing lab management capabilities on top of SCVMM.<\/li>\n
- Support for deployments to any platform<\/strong> \u2013 You can use our deployment tasks to orchestrate cross platform deployments with either Chef or Powershell DSC on Linux<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Docker support<\/strong> \u2013 We have support for doing deployments using Docker.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Release Management<\/h3>\n
If you need a deployment solution that goes beyond just simply auto deploying as part of a build, our release management capabilities will give it to you.\u00a0 With release management, you can orchestrate deployments across multiple environments, perform validations and approvals at each stage, track what versions of your app are deployed in each environment, manage configuration differences between the various environments, and more.<\/p>\n
Today, we have a release management solution that is available with both VS Online and TFS 2013.\u00a0 We\u2019re continuing to support that solution but, at the same time, working on some significant improvements that improve openness, cross platform support, ease of use and deliver on the next set of capabilities customers have been asking us for.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to describe the work a bit here because it\u2019s an important part of our DevOps solution but unlike what I\u2019ve talked about above, it\u2019s not quite available yet.\u00a0 It will be available on VS Online in private preview this summer and in on-premises TFS in the TFS 2015 Update 1 timeframe.\u00a0 Until then, our current version of Release Management will continue to work both on-prem and in the cloud.<\/p>\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- Browser based release management experience<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019re introducing a \u201cRelease\u201d hub in our web experience that allows you to manage releases from anywhere without any client software installed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/3058.clip_image004_700684A5.gif\")
<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n- \n
- \n
- \n
- Orchestrate across multiple environments<\/strong> \u2013 A release definition can describe a set of environments, a deployment sequence and a set of validations (like automated tests) and approvals that are executed at each stage.\u00a0 This allows you to manage the flow of updates from check in through to production deployment in a controlled fashion.<\/li>\n
- Simple and easy to compose automation pipeline<\/strong> \u2013 As I mentioned above, release management uses the same simple, extensible pipeline and task mechanism that Build.vnext does but wraps it in an experience for release pipelines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/0827.clip_image006_48CC3B70.gif\")
<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n- \n
- \n
- \n
- Auditing\/Traceability<\/strong> \u2013 All release and deployment operations are traced and audited \u2013 providing a clear picture of what succeeded and failed, who approved deployments and who made changes to the release definition and what changes were made.\u00a0 We also provide and easy way to see the state of each environment and what software is deployed on it.<\/li>\n
- Open architecture<\/strong> \u2013 Our release management features don\u2019t rely on you using all the rest of VSO\/TFS.\u00a0 You can use just release management even if you are using SVN, Jenkins, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Release validation<\/h3>\n
Testing plays a critical role in any modern DevOps release pipeline.\u00a0 Above, as part of build, I\u2019ve talked about running automated unit tests and reporting results but a proper validation needs to run tests against the deployed application as well.\u00a0 We\u2019re doing a bunch of work both in TFS 2015 and on VS Online to enable these scenarios easily.<\/p>\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- Functional testing service<\/strong> \u2013 We have a new service that works in concert with release management to automatically deploy test agents and tests.\u00a0 It will then execute those tests, possibly in parallel and report the results back to TFS\/VSO.\u00a0 These functional tests can be VS Coded UI tests, Selenium tests, Appium tests and more\u2026\u00a0 The results of these tests can be used in the release pipeline to automatically validate deployments.<\/li>\n
- Load tests<\/strong> \u2013 We now support running load tests as part of the release management pipeline so that you can validate performance, scale and reliability as part of your automated release sign-off process.\u00a0 We\u2019ve recently upgraded the VSO cloud load test service to support runs of up to 200 cores, enabling very large scale load tests.<\/li>\n
- Test analysis<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019ve provided a new test analysis experience in the test hub that allows you to review\/investigate test results, file bugs, etc.\u00a0 This is linked directly from the test results you find in both the build and release reports.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/3034.clip_image00110_thumb_130B5191.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nApplication Insights<\/h3>\n
Application Insights<\/a> is an analytics solution for any app that brings together Application Performance Management and Usage Analytics.\u00a0 It provides development teams with a comprehensive 360\u00b0 view across their application\u2019s performance, availability and usage.\u00a0 Originally designed to provide the best analytics experience for ASP.NET and Windows app developers, Application Insights comes with built-in support for a wide set of platforms.\u00a0 It includes J2EE for server apps, supporting cloud and on premise deployments, as well as iOS and Android for device apps, leveraging the HockeyApp acquisition.\u00a0 Application Insights provides intuitive views and powerful tools to allow fast troubleshooting and diagnostics, helps analyze user activity and adoption, and prioritizes future investments accordingly.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/1004.clip_image001_thumb_6B23D0E9.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe big news is that Application Insights is now in Public Preview.\u00a0 What does that mean?\u00a0 It\u2019s been around for a while now.\u00a0 It\u2019s an indication that we\u2019ve reached a level of completeness and readiness that we\u2019re ready for everyone to start trying it out.\u00a0 We also have announced the business model and will begin introducing it in the next few weeks (stay tuned for more on that).<\/p>\n
Of course, along with this comes a ton of improvements worth mentioning.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Interactive Data Correlation with Filters & Segmentation<\/li>\n
- Support for Java Web Apps & Services<\/li>\n
- Support for iOS & Android Mobile Apps<\/li>\n
- Support for Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Universal Apps<\/li>\n
- Support for OSS apps in Node.JS, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.<\/li>\n
- 8 more global locations for Availability Monitoring (now 16 in total)<\/li>\n
- Crash Diagnostics for Mobile Apps (HockeyApp Integration)<\/li>\n
- Continuous Data Export to Azure Blob Storage for any custom analysis you want to do<\/li>\n
- AI enablement for Eclipse, IntelliJ, Android Studio & XCode IDEs<\/li>\n
- Integrated support for Azure Web Apps & Azure VMs<\/li>\n
- Out of box integration with Windows 10 Dev Portal<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Pricing<\/span><\/p>\n
As I mentioned, we\u2019ve announced the planned business model for Application Insights so you know what using it is going to cost you.\u00a0 There\u2019s a couple of key points to the model that are worth mentioning.<\/p>\n
- \n
- We have a nearly feature complete free plan that allows you to try out the full range to telemetry and analysis offered by Application Insights.\u00a0 It\u2019s completely free up to\u00a05 million\u00a0telemetry data points per month.\u00a0 There is no time limit.\u00a0 You can upgrade to paid plans to get more telemetry data points, longer retention access to the data export feature, etc.<\/li>\n
- We tried to create a simple pricing model.\u00a0 We think it\u2019s the simplest in the industry.\u00a0 It really just comes down to how much telemetry you want to collect per application.\u00a0 The more telemetry you send, the more it costs.\u00a0 We don\u2019t differentiate between different kinds of telemetry.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/2402.image_thumb_3853CA75.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNote this table shows the full retail price along with the half price discount during the private preview.\u00a0 You can get more details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Go to our Application Insights page<\/a> to get started.<\/p>\n
SonarQube integration<\/h3>\n
I\u2019ve seen a real surge in the last couple of years in people looking for ways to understand their technical debt and to ultimately address it.\u00a0 This effort relies on static analysis, code clone detection, code complexity analysis development process metrics and more.\u00a0 The open source community has flocked to SonarQube as the epicenter of an effort to build a great solution for technical debt analysis.<\/p>\n
At the \/\/Build\/ conference, we announced that we are working with SonarSource \u2013 the primary team behind SonarQube to bring a great technical debt solution to our customers.\u00a0 This effort consists of 3 parts:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Great .NET support<\/strong> \u2013 SonarQube has great C++ and Java (and a few others) support but pretty weak support for C#\/.NET.\u00a0 We have joined forces with SonarSource to make SonarQube a great solution for .NET \u2013 leveraging our infrastructure like Roslyn, FXCop, Code coverage, etc.<\/li>\n
- Seamless ALM integration with VS Online and TFS<\/strong> \u2013 We are integrating SonarQube into the Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Online workflows (like build automation) so that the analysis is easily and automatically at your finger tips.<\/li>\n
- Ease of acquisition<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019re working with SonarSource to make SonarQube even easier to install and manage.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to see it be zero additional overhead for TFS and VSO users.\u00a0 We\u2019re not there but it\u2019s my aspiration.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/1351.image_thumb_1A754674.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCheck out Stuart Kent\u2019s blog post<\/a> for more on how to get started.<\/p>\n
PowerBI integration<\/h3>\n
From the beginning, one of the strengths of Team Foundation Server was a data warehouse that allowed you to mine your development information to gain insights.\u00a0 When we moved TFS into the cloud (VS Online), we didn\u2019t bring the warehouse along with it because the architecture wasn\u2019t particularly cloud friendly.<\/p>\n
Since then, we introduced light weight charting for work items and test cases to give you a data visualization experience that easy and embedded in TFS\/VSO.\u00a0 However, for rich analysis, that\u2019s not enough.\u00a0 You want the full power of professional BI tools to unlock insights on your data.<\/p>\n
At \/\/Build\/ we showed our next step on this journey with a new PowerBI connector for VS Online.\u00a0 You can try it by visiting the PowerBI portal<\/a> and using the new Visual Studio Online data connector.\u00a0 In this first increment, we\u2019ve provided an experience over code information (checkins, pull requests, etc).\u00a0 It works for both Git and Team Foundation Version Control.\u00a0 Next (and soon), we\u2019ll add support for work items and then more beyond that.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/4011.clip_image0018_thumb_1CB1CF30.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI encourage you to check it out.\u00a0 Of course, you\u2019ll need a VS Online account with some interesting data in it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Agile project management<\/h3>\n
I don\u2019t have any big Agile project management announcement.\u00a0 But, if you haven’t been watching the VSO release notes over the past few months, you\u2019re unaware of a TON of improvements we\u2019ve made.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been moving fast and we continue to move very fast.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been working on backlog management, the kanban board, the task board, card customization and more.<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/IC795776.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHere\u2019s a list of some of the release notes worth checking out.\u00a0 All these Agile project management features will be included in TFS 2015 (though many, but not all, made it into the release candidate).<\/p>\n
- \n
- Add fields to cards, board filtering<\/a><\/li>\n
- Card configuration options<\/a><\/li>\n
- @CurrentIteration, Kanban reordering and DoD and bugs on the task board<\/a><\/li>\n
- Kanban split columns, inline adding and editing<\/a><\/li>\n
- VS Online Basic license expanded<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
We\u2019ve got a lot more coming in Update 1 and on the service in the coming weeks.\u00a0 Hang on tight if you use the Agile tooling.<\/p>\n
VS Online Extensions<\/h3>\n
A year ago I announced an effort to embrace REST, OAuth and Service hooks to open up TFS and VS Online.\u00a0 At the time we demoed some cool integrations like User Voice and Trello based on these new web standard extensibility points.\u00a0 Over the past year, we\u2019ve worked to enable more extensions.\u00a0 You can find a bunch of VS Online extensions on our website<\/a>.\u00a0 These REST, OAuth and Service hooks extensions have only been available on VS Online and now they are available in TFS 2015 as well.<\/p>\n
This integration was primarily focused on service to service integration and one of the things we knew we were going to need to make it truly great was a way to do UI integration as well.\u00a0 At \/\/Build\/ this week we demoed a new extensibility mechanism for our web experience on VS Online that allows 3rd parties to plug in hubs, controls, actions, etc.\u00a0 We also demonstrated some sample extensions we\u2019ve built like a cool team calendar \u2013 built 100% with the extensibility model (and we\u2019re making the code available<\/a> as a sample and you can find other samples<\/a> as well).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2015\/04\/5428.clip_image0025_thumb_49C6BBFE.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor now, there\u2019s no call to action for the broader VSO community.\u00a0 This new extensibility mechanism is in \u201cprivate preview\u201d.\u00a0 We are looking for \u201ca few good men(or women :))\u201d who want to start building extensions.\u00a0 These early adopters will both help us hammer out the extensibility model and help us populate a good catalog of extensions for when we do make the feature more broadly available.\u00a0 Ultimately, we plan to have a gallery\/marketplace that will make it easy to acquire and install extensions.\u00a0 You can learn more in the VSO integrate documentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n
For now this new UI extensibility capability is only available on VS Online.\u00a0 Once we get it baked, we will bring it to on-prem TFS too,<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
I have to stop.\u00a0 My fingers are tired.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been writing this for a few hours now and I\u2019m not done with all the cool new stuff.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to have to write another post in the next week or two to cover some of the stuff I left out.\u00a0 Hopefully you like what you see and, as always, feedback welcome.<\/p>\n
Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s conference season \u2013 \/\/Build\/ is this week and Ignite is next week.\u00a0 As you might expect, we have a TON of stuff to share so I\u2019ll get right to it. Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 2015 Release Candidate This week released the release candidates for both VS 2015 and TFS 2015.\u00a0 Both are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":14617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,4,8],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tfs","tag-visual-studio","tag-vsonline"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
It\u2019s conference season \u2013 \/\/Build\/ is this week and Ignite is next week.\u00a0 As you might expect, we have a TON of stuff to share so I\u2019ll get right to it. Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 2015 Release Candidate This week released the release candidates for both VS 2015 and TFS 2015.\u00a0 Both are […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/bharry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Card configuration options<\/a><\/li>\n
- Seamless ALM integration with VS Online and TFS<\/strong> \u2013 We are integrating SonarQube into the Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Online workflows (like build automation) so that the analysis is easily and automatically at your finger tips.<\/li>\n
- Great .NET support<\/strong> \u2013 SonarQube has great C++ and Java (and a few others) support but pretty weak support for C#\/.NET.\u00a0 We have joined forces with SonarSource to make SonarQube a great solution for .NET \u2013 leveraging our infrastructure like Roslyn, FXCop, Code coverage, etc.<\/li>\n
- Load tests<\/strong> \u2013 We now support running load tests as part of the release management pipeline so that you can validate performance, scale and reliability as part of your automated release sign-off process.\u00a0 We\u2019ve recently upgraded the VSO cloud load test service to support runs of up to 200 cores, enabling very large scale load tests.<\/li>\n
- Functional testing service<\/strong> \u2013 We have a new service that works in concert with release management to automatically deploy test agents and tests.\u00a0 It will then execute those tests, possibly in parallel and report the results back to TFS\/VSO.\u00a0 These functional tests can be VS Coded UI tests, Selenium tests, Appium tests and more\u2026\u00a0 The results of these tests can be used in the release pipeline to automatically validate deployments.<\/li>\n
- Open architecture<\/strong> \u2013 Our release management features don\u2019t rely on you using all the rest of VSO\/TFS.\u00a0 You can use just release management even if you are using SVN, Jenkins, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Auditing\/Traceability<\/strong> \u2013 All release and deployment operations are traced and audited \u2013 providing a clear picture of what succeeded and failed, who approved deployments and who made changes to the release definition and what changes were made.\u00a0 We also provide and easy way to see the state of each environment and what software is deployed on it.<\/li>\n
- Simple and easy to compose automation pipeline<\/strong> \u2013 As I mentioned above, release management uses the same simple, extensible pipeline and task mechanism that Build.vnext does but wraps it in an experience for release pipelines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Orchestrate across multiple environments<\/strong> \u2013 A release definition can describe a set of environments, a deployment sequence and a set of validations (like automated tests) and approvals that are executed at each stage.\u00a0 This allows you to manage the flow of updates from check in through to production deployment in a controlled fashion.<\/li>\n
- \n
- Browser based release management experience<\/strong> \u2013 We\u2019re introducing a \u201cRelease\u201d hub in our web experience that allows you to manage releases from anywhere without any client software installed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Auto-provision cloud environments<\/strong> \u2013 Using Azure, you can automatically provision the hardware as part of the deployment process.\u00a0 Ultimately we\u2019ll enable this on prem as well by bringing it together with our existing lab management capabilities on top of SCVMM.<\/li>\n
- Deploy to cloud or on premises<\/strong> \u2013 You can deploy applications both to cloud and on premises environments.<\/li>\n
- Seamless integration with XAML builds<\/strong> \u2013 Build.vnext definitions and the earlier XAML build definitions now share the same Build tab and can coexist happily.<\/li>\n
- Auto updating build agents<\/strong> \u2013 There\u2019s no need to run around and update all your build agents any more.\u00a0 The server\/service will automatically distribute agent updates.\u00a0 This won\u2019t change any of the tools (compilers, etc) just the build automation agent.<\/li>\n
- Download Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 5 RC<\/a><\/li>\n