Some Clarification on VSTS licensing, builds, and Continuous Integration
Jeff Beehler wrote this post clarifying some questions on VSTS licensing as it relates to build environments.
There is a common misconception (that I shared) that your build machine needed a licensed copy of VSTS team developer. In fact, that's not correct. Jeff's bottom line is refreshing in its simplicity:
"The way I think about it, the people that are using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that the build machines are covered as well."
He references the VSTS licensing whitepaper (warning: it's dry as dust) located here. I did look at the whitepaper, and and that does lead me to wonder about some scenarios. The whitepaper describes how the build process works in a Team Server environment (p. 9). What's not clear to me is if this same statement is true when developers are using Team Developer (or VS2008 Pro) to create unit tests, but not using TFS as the reposititory and ALM solution. (For instance, can SourceVault customers use this scenario? Or, because they aren't using TFS Server, do they need to have the appropriate developer SKU on the build machine?
Update: As Jeff comments below, even in the scenario I outlined above, if the developers have the license to create the tests, the build server can run them. Cool.