"Mac, how do I compile Java with Team Build?"

In the past week, I've fielded a number of questions from people within my company regarding how to get started compiling Ant based Java projects within TFS. Here is what I tell them. And it would be what I'd tell you if you asked.

My Colleagues: "Mac, can you provide us some information on how to get started using Team Build to compile our Java projects?"

Mac: "There are a number of different ways to solve the problem, but I'd suggest looking at Teamprise's Team Build Extensions. This is an open source project, supported by Teamprise, to run Ant scripts via Team Build (which is nothing more than MSBuild behind the covers). They have a very good tutorial (as part of the distribution if I remember) and support forum.

I'd start by trying to get one of your simpler Java projects to build. Then once you build that, you can get a better understanding of how the tooling can best solve your problem. What we do is have one parent Ant script that calls all the other tier Ant scripts. So basically Team Build is just the high-level driver and we let Team Build Extensions and Ant take care of the rest. This seems to work pretty well for both [MY CURRENT BUSINESS UNIT] and [MY OLD BUSINESS UNIT]. Also, I think if you have JUnit tests that you run as part of the build, and follow some simple rules, Teamprise Build Extensions will publish the results back to TFS. Pretty cool!
"

So if you're looking for help getting started, consider this my response to you. Let me know how it goes.