MSBuild & Virtual PC’s – Like peas in a pod?

Guy Smith-Ferrier - Automating Testing Using Windows Virtual PC

“As promised here are the slides [GD:Click through for all the slide/source links] and source code for yesterday's "Automating Testing Using Windows Virtual PC" presentation at the MVP Open Day. The sister presentation to this one is "Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005" and you can download the slides and source code for this one. If you are using Virtual Server 2005 you might like to download both as the Windows Virtual PC presentation is more recent and contain slightly more code that is still applicable to Virtual Server 2005” [GD:Post leached in full]

From the slides;

What caught my eye in this was that the MSBuild Extension Pack was getting some Windows Virtual PC msbuild task love… that’s cool…

For years now I’ve been wanting to see about using virtual machines in my dev/test processes. VS2010’s Lab Management is a huge step in the right direction, but it’s still just one step. The inclusion of MSBuild tasks in the MSBuild Extension Pack (and the Virtual Server tasks in the SDC Tasks) is another…

The thought of queuing a build (or via CI/nightly) and getting a VM out for delivery/testing seems to be too darn cool to me. I know some of you might have been doing this for years already (cough… like Scott Hanselman, who’s chatted about it in his podcasts) but some of us are in environments that have barely graduated to automated builds let alone embrace virtualization (and the thought of the two of them together, well that’s like WAY out there! ;)

Anyway… This will be an area, especially in the VS2010 wave, that I will be keeping a closer eye on.

(via FreeToDev - Automating Testing Using Windows Virtual PC)

 

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