Build or Rebuild on the build server (CI server)

Question

I am running TeamCity to build a .NET project (several projects to be more exact).

Should i be using Rebuild target or Build target?

I would like to minimize the build time, while not producing any newer versions of projects that haven't changed.

Is this safe practice to use "Build" target? what if the previous project outputs were erased? how do i verify that i can be doing this safely?

Answer 1

You should use rebuild if you need to rebuild all the projects, for instance in order to get coherent timestamps or version numbers (though usually, a change in a linked AssemblyInfo.cs will trigger a build as well.)

Build is completely safe even if the build output from a previous build is gone, or even if the build happens to be done on a new build agent which has no build output. In that case, all necessary projects will be built.

However, you might have custom MSBuild steps in your sln/csproj files that depends on a (Re)build, in which case you need to be more careful, but other than that, go for Build if you want to.