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tfscontinuous-integrationtfsbuildintellitracehistorical-debugging

Is there a way to generate an Intellitrace file from a TFS Build?

I currently have an on-premises TFS 2017, a TFS build and a test that fails on the build agent but not when running locally. I heard about historical debugging but I couldn't find instructions on how to enable it on a TFS build, if that's even possible.

Is it possible to configure my build so that it generates an intellitrace file for me to debug the test run afterwards?

Solution

  • For intellitrace which related to the old testsettings file and could add some variables to configure this.

    You could also manually enable such option in the VS on your build agent.

    Also find a link mentioned it seems also work with Msbuild arguments. Even not documented anywhere in Msbuild command doc. I wonder whether IntelliTrace is still running even though it's not explicitly specified to do so

    enter image description here

    However, looks like you just want to find the root cause why your tests failed on tfs build even it passed locally.

    To narrow down the issue, suggest you directly remote to your build agent. Instead of through TFS build, manually build your project, run the tests in the Visual Studio on build agent.

    It will come out whether it's an environment issue. You must make sure it's the same environment for build agent and your local.

    TFS is just using build service account to invoke msbuild/vstest command in build agent to run build/test.

    Also make sure build service account have appropriately permission if your tests required some permission.