Change TDS Item Deployment by build configuration

Question

In TDS Classic, is there a way to vary the "Item Deployment" property of an item by build? The use case is: I have test content that should be "Always Update" for Dev but it should be "Deploy Once" on QA

Is this possible? If not, whats the best practice around these scenarios?

Thanks

Answer 1

One simple way to handle this is to create a separate TDS project dedicated to DEV related content that's set to Always Update.

In your build configuration you can allow for the generation of multiple update packages. The last step is ensuring that the DEV update package is never installed beyond DEV. How you handle that will depend on how you're installing the update packages upstream. If it's a manual installation, then there's no problem. If it's an automatic installation, you'll need to exclude the DEV update package.

The approach above has the added benefit of being able to easily sync in your local environment very quickly and stay in sync with other developers who will also keep that developer TDS project up to date..