Mike Parks

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2!

MikeParks — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:43:38 GMT

We recently had Stephen Toub, a Senior Program Manager on the Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft, swing by our office and walked us through some really cool ways to start implementing parallel programming using Visual Studio 2010 and the 4.0 Framework. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to attend this, it was one of the best presentations I've ever seen. It's exciting to see the technology evolving :)

Anyway, during his presentation we caught a lot of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 in action. There's a bunch of cool improvements and everything seems a lot faster and more responsive. TFS 2010 is also available for download on Microsoft's web site. The links have been changing around since it's been released but here's where it's all currently at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

Check it out!

- mike

TFS - View all pending changes for all users

MikeParks — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:13:25 GMT

Team Foundation Server allows you to see who has what file checked out at any time. If you would like to see a list of files that any TFS User has checked out, follow the steps below:

Open Visual Studio 2008 > Click File > Source Control > Find In Source Control > Status
Select "Display all checked out" or "Display files checked out to" (to filter changes by user)
Hit Find

The screenshots below show the type of results you should expect. Another great way to get this info is by using Team Foundation Sidekicks. If you go this route, you will be able to export the results to a spreadsheet to make them easier to work with. I had to use this the other day to generate a list of all files that were checked out by multiple users. It was easy to work with the data once I got it in Excel. If you prefer getting these results from the command line, you can use the tf status command in the Visual Studio 2008 command prompt as another option to view pending changes by TFS Users.

TFS - Undelete File or Folder

MikeParks — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:45:25 GMT

If you ever need to undelete a file/folder in TFS, here's how you can do it. I found a couple of people who didn't know this feature existed so I figured I'd throw a blog up about it.

Open Visual Studio > Click Tools > Options > Source Control > Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
Check Show deleted items in the Source Control Explorer, hit OK
Right click on deleted file/folder in Source Control Explorer
Click Undelete
Check In

TFS Auto Shelving

MikeParks — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:14:57 GMT

In one of our meetings the other day a few developers on our team asked if there was an Auto Shelve feature in TFS to shelve their pending changes automatically each night. I couldn't find anything in the Visual Studio 2008 IDE that allowed us to do this. After some research, I did find a work around.

Basically, I just created a batch file that uses the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt to run tf shelve on the highest level folder of your local TFS workspace mapped on your C drive. It uses tf shelve to create a TFS shelveset called "Daily Backup - Your Name". It will replace that same shelveset every day with all your current changes (or however often you have the Windows Scheduled Task runs).

This way, you will always have a backup copy of your daily changes. It's always nice to be on the safe side, even if you think you don't need it. A few developers have had their machines crash on them and had to have the machine re-imaged. This would have came in handy back then. I could have built a custom TFS add-in or app, but I figured this was extremely easy to just use a batch file and windows task. Anyway, to set this up, just follow the steps below:

Open notepad and paste these two lines in:

call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"
tf shelve "Daily Backup - YOUR_NAME" /noprompt /replace > "C:\TFSBackupLogFile.txt"
Edit the title in the 2nd line to include your name and edit the path at the end of the 2nd line to map the log file
Save the file to your desktop (or anywhere you'd like) and name it TFSBackup.bat
Click Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks > Add Scheduled Task
Walk through the scheduled task Wizard and point it to the TFSBackup.bat file you created
Set the Task to run daily at whatever time you want
Run the task to make sure it runs executes the bat file successfully and check TFS to make sure your shelveset was created

You can view TFS Shelvesets by opening Visual Studio > File > Source Control > Unshelve Pending Changes.

Visual Studio TFS Work Item Search Plugin

MikeParks — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:21:11 GMT

If you're accessing work items in Team Foundation Server from the Visual Studio IDE, you will end up using this plugin more than you might think. I'm surprised they only have 3194 downloads. It basically does exactly what it says. You can either type in a work item ID to immediately bring up the work item, or type in text to search through work items (like a word or two that would be in the Title or Description). If you're using Visual Studio 2008, check it out. Here's the link to where it lives on codeplex:

http://searchworkitems.codeplex.com/

- mike

Bing vs Google

MikeParks — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:51:41 GMT

If you're a big search junkie, check out this site: http://www.bing-vs-google.com/. It's the best comparision tool that I've seen out there so far that will really let you see the differences between the two huge search giants in the industry.

Developers love tools :)

TFS - Deploying To Multiple Environments Using Team Build

MikeParks — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:49:13 GMT

Using TFS and Team Build to deploy to Development, Integration, QA, Stage, Pre Production, or any other testing servers you have can be quite a bit of a challenge sometimes. I haven't really found a lot of documentation or best practices out there for it either. There are plenty of ways to move the files across each environment. I'm going to try this build definition out for a while and see how well it works.

When I queue a new build definition up, I'm going to pass in the following parameters (they will be different each time I queue a new build so I can specify exactly what I need):
/p:GetVersion=C1306
/p:DeployTo=Dev

These parameters are used to tell my build definition which source control version I want to build and which environment I want to deploy the files to. The GetVersion parameter can accept a changeset number, label, date, "W" (Version last fetched to your workspace), or "T" (latest version). The DeployTo parameter can accept Dev, QA, or Stage. You can also default the parameters by setting the values in the .rsp file. See the following links for more information on how these are being used:

Building a Specific Version with Team Build 2008
MSBuild Conditional Constructs

Here's a sample build definition that uses the parameters:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!-- DO NOT EDIT the project element - the ToolsVersion specified here does not prevent the solutions

and projects in the SolutionToBuild item group from targeting other versions of the .NET framework.

-->

<BuildMachine>TFSRTM08</BuildMachine>

</ProjectExtensions>

<TeamProject>MikeTFS</TeamProject>

<DropLocation>\\UNKNOWN\drops</DropLocation>

<RunTest>false</RunTest>

<RunCodeAnalysis>Never</RunCodeAnalysis>

<WorkItemFieldValues>System.Reason=Build Failure;System.Description=Start the build using Team Build</WorkItemFieldValues>

<WorkItemTitle>Build failure in build:</WorkItemTitle>

<DescriptionText>This work item was created by Team Build on a build failure.</DescriptionText>

<BuildlogText>The build log file is at:</BuildlogText>

<ErrorWarningLogText>The errors/warnings log file is at:</ErrorWarningLogText>

</PropertyGroup>

<DeployPath>\\MikesDevServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

<DeployPath>\\MikesQAServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

<DeployPath>\\MikesStageServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

</Choose>

</SolutionToBuild>

</ItemGroup>

<FlavorToBuild>Release</FlavorToBuild>

<PlatformToBuild>Mixed Platforms</PlatformToBuild>

</ConfigurationToBuild>

</ItemGroup>

</CreateItem>

<Compile Include="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\**\*.*"

Exclude="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\**\Web.Config"/>

</ItemGroup>

</Target>

</Project>

Hope this helps! Leave me some feedback if you get a chance. Thanks everyone.

Team Build - Deploying To Multiple Environments

MikeParks — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:20:28 GMT

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!-- DO NOT EDIT the project element - the ToolsVersion specified here does not prevent the solutions

and projects in the SolutionToBuild item group from targeting other versions of the .NET framework.

-->

<BuildMachine>TFSRTM08</BuildMachine>

</ProjectExtensions>

<TeamProject>MikeTFS</TeamProject>

<DropLocation>\\UNKNOWN\drops</DropLocation>

<RunTest>false</RunTest>

<RunCodeAnalysis>Never</RunCodeAnalysis>

<WorkItemFieldValues>System.Reason=Build Failure;System.Description=Start the build using Team Build</WorkItemFieldValues>

<WorkItemTitle>Build failure in build:</WorkItemTitle>

<DescriptionText>This work item was created by Team Build on a build failure.</DescriptionText>

<BuildlogText>The build log file is at:</BuildlogText>

<ErrorWarningLogText>The errors/warnings log file is at:</ErrorWarningLogText>

</PropertyGroup>

<DeployPath>\\MikesDevServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

<DeployPath>\\MikesQAServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

<DeployPath>\\MikesStageServer\Websites\MikesWebApplication</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</When>

</Choose>

</SolutionToBuild>

</ItemGroup>

<FlavorToBuild>Release</FlavorToBuild>

<PlatformToBuild>Mixed Platforms</PlatformToBuild>

</ConfigurationToBuild>

</ItemGroup>

</CreateItem>

<Compile Include="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\**\*.*"

Exclude="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\**\Web.Config"/>

</ItemGroup>

</Target>

</Project>

Hope this helps! Leave me some feedback if you get a chance. Thanks everyone.

Team Build - Delete All Files - Include and Exclude

MikeParks — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:43:45 GMT

A few days ago I needed to delete all files except for web.configs out of a deployment folder using Team Build. I added the code below to the build definitions .proj file. It's a quick and easy way to clean out some, but not all, of the files in the deployment folder. You can use wildcards in the CreateItem tag. It's not perfect because it isn't made to deal with deleting empty sub folders but it got the job done for what I needed.

<DeployPath>\\MikesServer\Websites\TestWebsite</DeployPath>

</PropertyGroup>

</CreateItem>

</Target>

There are a few other ways you can clean out a folder. The delete task is the one I used above. An easy way to delete everything is to use the <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\dir" /> and <MakeDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\dir" /> tags. You can also use a MSBuild tasks library such as SDC Tasks and use the CleanFolder task to delete everything in a folder.

TFS Unshelve Changeset Search Wildcard

MikeParks — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:26:33 GMT

All of our developers have recently been dealing with a lot of shelving and unshelving in Team Foundation Server to share code. When unshelving shelvesets, we get prompted to fill in an Owner name text box. If you don't know the owners user name, an easy way to search through shelvesets is by entering an asterisk in the Owner name text box and then pressing the find button. This wildcard will bring up all the shelvesets available for you to unshelve. It's a handy little trick when you need to broaden your search.

I thought this was a pretty common known trick among TFS users but I've found more and more people didn't even know this existed, so I figured I'd throw a blog up about it. Hope that helps.

- Mike