About this task
When you perform a build for your team, you are gathering all of the completed tasks for the Integration Testing project grouping and building them for integration and testing. When you perform a rebuild for your team, you are manually adding a task to or excluding a task from the Integration Testing project grouping, then rebuilding just that change.
You might need to rebuild your application for one of the following reasons.
- The requirements for the build changed and you need to add a feature.
- The requirements for the build changed and you need to remove a feature.
- A testing team found a problem during testing and they need a new build.
- A task that is necessary to the build was not included (for example, it was not completed in time or its release was set incorrectly).
- An object associated with a task is breaking the build and needs to be removed.
- A developer completed a fix task to fix a task that was not working properly, and you need to add the fix task to your build.
Regardless of why the build is broken, you will need to rebuild. The timing of the rebuild could occur at any point in your process. A broken build could happen at any milestone; likewise, a situation where your requirements changed could happen any time. Because you are building the Integration Testing projects, which change frequently and are built often (as opposed to the System Testing projects, which are typically more stable), you might rebuild fairly often. Your workflow would be similar to the following:
- Keep the baseline and tasks in the Integration Testing project grouping from changing during an update.
- Manually add, remove, or exclude tasks in the Integration Testing project grouping.
You might add one or several tasks, add and remove tasks, exclude a task, or any combination. You might do this quickly or over several days.
- Update the Integration Testing project grouping.
- Show and resolve membership conflicts.
You might resolve conflicts yourself or have team members resolve the conflicts. Therefore, you might resolve conflicts quickly or over several days.
- Rebuild your product.
If you are building a small product with one or two added or removed tasks, the build might go quickly and your smoke test might be immediately successful. However, if you cannot get your product to build, regardless of its size, see Rebuilding without a baseline.
- Create a baseline.
- Allow the baseline and tasks in the Integration Testing project grouping to change during an update.
The following steps show you how to #wp931435/wp931469 or #wp931435/wp931510, and then perform a rebuild.
Add a task to a build
- Right-click over the appropriate Integration Testing project grouping, and select Properties.
The Properties dialog box appears.
- Clear the Auto Update check box, and click Apply.
This keeps the baseline and tasks from changing during an update operation. For more details, see Keeping the baseline and tasks from changing during an update LINK.
- Click the Tasks tab.
This tab shows the tasks that you have manually added to the project grouping, either in this dialog box or by using the Add to Project Grouping option from the Tasks context menu or the Actions main menu.
For a detailed description of the various ways tasks are added to a project grouping, see "Add Tasks" in Changing the update properties for a project LINK.
- Click the Add Task button.
The Select Task dialog box appears. Use it to find the task(s) that you want to add to the project grouping.
- Choose a task and click OK.
You can choose one or more tasks.
- Right-click over the Integration Testing project grouping, point to Update, and select All Projects.
The update operation will bring in the changes from the new task(s).
- Show and resolve membership conflicts. (See Resolving membership conflicts in a project or project grouping LINK for details.)
Once you have added a task, you might have conflicts as a result of broken dependencies. For example, if the task you added has other tasks that it depends on that were not added, you will need to work through these dependencies to decide on the best way to resolve conflicts.
- Rebuild your product.
After a successful rebuild, you will want to test what you have built by running through a series of basic operations to ensure the integrity of the build, such as start the application, perform a few often-used operations, and exit from the application.
- Create a snapshot of a build.
If you are creating a test baseline for a team to perform further testing, do not publish or release the baseline for use.
If you want to make the Integration Testing build available to developers right away, set the Publish check box when you create the baseline.
- In the Properties dialog box for the Integration Testing project grouping, click the Properties tab, select the Auto Update check box.
This enables the baseline and tasks to change during the next update operation.