Upgrading from XAML to Build 2015 with minimal changes

This series is currently a work in progress

XAML builds on Visual Studio Team Services will be deprecated in September 2016. While support for XAML builds seems to stay around on-premise for a little while longer, it's time to upgrade to Build 2015.

You may have invested quite a bit in the XAML build system in the past, but as long as your changes have been mostly limited to custom MsBuild tasks and targets, Powershell or batch scripts, then upgrading to Build 2015 is (almost) a piece of cake.

In this series I'll go through the basic settings in the XAML Default Template and I'll explain how to transfer each setting over to the new system. There are still a few things which are not possible in the new system, such as configuring Gated Checkins for TFVC, but almost every other setting can be converted over.

Before going over each setting, I'll assume that you've installed at least one build agent, or are using Visual Studio Team Services with the Hosted Build option.

TFVC: Configuring your repository, clean workspace, labeling and triggers
- Accessing multiple TFVC repositories in a single build definition.
Git: Configuring your repository, clean workspace, labeling and triggers
Configuring which solution to build, platforms and configurations, clean build
- Building multiple combinations of platform and configurations
Configuring the output location and publication of artifacts
- Mimic the XAML build's Output Location option
Configuring custom MsBuild Arguments, Code Analysis and pre-/post-build scripts
Configuring test runs, custom test runners and pre-/post-test scripts
Configuring publication of Source and Symbols
Selecting the agent to run your test on
Configuring build number format and work item creation/association
Configuring your retention policy

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