patterns & practices: Visual Studio 2005 Team System Guidance

How to create a custom check-in policy

- J.D. Meier, Jason Taylor, Alex Mackman, Prashant Bansode

To create a custom check-in policy, use the plug-in model exposed by the policy framework.

You can create a custom check-in policy to implement your own policy logic; for example, if you want to check if users have been adding comments or using regular expressions correctly at the time of check-in.

Plug-ins are used both within the policy definition process and during the policy evaluation process. Policy plug-ins are installed either as stand-alone utilities or as part of a separate application, and are registered with the policy framework so that they can be loaded as needed.

A policy plug-in must expose the following interfaces:

• IPolicyDefinition – The IPolicyDefinition interface exposes methods that are used in the process of defining policy requirements for a team project. This interface includes methods for invoking a user interface specific to the policy plug-in in order to allow users to easily define a check-in policy.
• IPolicyEvaluation – The IPolicyEvaluation interface exposes methods that are used in the process of evaluating policy compliance during the check-in process. This interface includes methods that accept the contents of a check-in operation and analyze them to establish whether the defined policy is satisfied.

You can package multiple policy plug-ins n the same assembly. The only requirement is that you implement the plug-ins as separate classes.
Note: These interfaces are exposed in *PolicyBase *class. As an alternative to implementing IPolicyDefinition and *IPolicyEvaluation *interfaces, you can derive a class from PolicyBase.

Additional Resources

• For more information about creating and using a custom check-in policy, see “How To - Create Custom Check-In Policies in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server” in this guide.
• To learn how to customize a check-in policy, see “Walkthrough: Customizing Check-in Policies and Notes” at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181281(VS.80).aspx
• To view sample code that will disallow selected patterns upon check-in, see “Checkin Policy to Disallow Certain Patterns” at http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/archive/2006/02/02/523125.aspx
• To see sample code that will enforce comments upon check-in, see “Sample Checkin Policy: Make Sure the Comment Isn’t Empty” at http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/archive/2006/01/21/515858.aspx
• To learn how to register a new check-in policy, see “I’ve Made a New Check-In Policy! How Do I Add It?” at http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/archive/2006/02/07/526778.aspx
• For more information about using code analysis tools, see “Guidelines for Using Code Analysis Tools” at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182023(VS.80).aspx
• For more information about creating a new policy, see “Policy Plug-ins” at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb130343(VS.80).aspx