So, I should have moved the BizTalk Deployment Framework to CodePlex long ago, but better late than never.  Find it here.

A few small items:

  • Better support for 64 bit platforms in scripting operations
  • Support for using the 64 bit isapi extension for http adapter
  • A "startApplicationOnDeploy" property you can use to control whether your application immediately starts after deploying
  • Bug fixes for the lightweight "Update Orchs/Comps" tool menu item
  • Automatic creation of "ProjectPath" sso config item – that lets you know where your developer workspace or server installation directory resides.
  • Better support for pre-processing bindings on developer workstations

But the cool item is integration of Tom Abraham’s improved “SettingsFileGenerator” – see here.  It moves the process of generating individual environment setting files from a VB macro inside of the SettingsFileGenerator.xls spreadsheet to an external command-line tool.

It also allows you to use the Excel XML format for the SettingsFileGenerator spreadsheet.  The Excel XML format allows for the ability to do standard diff/merge activities, a big improvement…

The way we’ve intergated this tool into the deployment framework allows you to treat the individual settings files as "transient" - they will get auto-generated by the deployment process now on the fly, and do not need to be version controlled or manually generated after spreadsheet edits. 

Enjoy!