I am trying to refine our build process and I feel over my head with the xml in the .proj. I want to understand the items that are there, and know what the options are, but I'm not sure where to look for answers.

I have a huge bunch of stuff I want to do with this build, like have a directory structure as a result that allows me to deploy individual projects in my solution to different machines. Right now it is spitting out a flat file of just the .dll's. Could anyone direct me to a good resource? I can't seem to find one.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Since you posted in this forum, I'm assuming that you're talking about Team Build projects.

The first place to start would be the MSBuild documentation, as team build files are simply MSBuild files that make use of a bunch of VSTS-supplied tasks.

MSBuild documentation starts here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wea2sca5.aspx

Documentation for the team build tasks starts here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243778.aspx

 Another option is to use a 3rd party build automation tool.  I use FinalBuilder (www.finalbuilder.com) for this purpose.  It's a great tool, easy to work with, and has an active and helpful developer community.