Chapter 8. Versioning assemblies using Team Build

One basic thing you can do to streamline your build process is identify each build with a unique and meaningful number that’s stamped on generated assemblies. In a streamlined build process, generating this unique identifying number needs to be centrally coordinated. Otherwise, if you use an ad hoc approach, you’ll run into operational difficulties trying to apply a consistent numbering scheme across multiple projects and solutions. For effective troubleshooting and traceability, it’s imperative that the generated assemblies are stamped with a unique identifier that can be easily traced back to a system build number.

By default, the build number generated by Team Build is different from the version number stamped on the output assemblies. The build number generated by Team Build is based on the current date and time. The version number stamped on the generated assemblies is based on the contents of the AssemblyInfo.cs (or AssemblyInfo.vb) file. If these two numbers aren’t synchronized, you’ll have a hard time tracing problems in deployment environments back to the corresponding source files.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about the following:

8.1. Assembly versioning background

8.2. Versioning Windows applications

8.3. Customizing Team Build to support assembly numbering

8.4. Versioning web applications

8.5. Summary