Tag | TFS Posts
With the ability to extend Visual Studio 2010, lots of great extensions have popped up. These not only increase productivity, but make the whole coding experience much nicer. To find and install extensions, in Visual Studio just go to Tools -> Extension Manager. Here's a list of my favorites: Read more at http://blog.danskingdom.com... ...
RedGate SQL Source Control is a Management Studio add-in that allows you to seamlessly (hopefully...) connect your existing source control system to SQL Server. It is advertised as doing all the typical stuff you'd expect: Source control schemas and data within SSMS Connect databases to TFS, SVN, Sourcegear Vault, Vault Pro, Mercurial, Perforce, Git, Bazaar, and any source control system with a capable command line Work with shared development databases, or individual copies Track changes to follow ...
I have found myself using more and more of the tools Red Gate software makes. They have proven (to me) to be effective and to the point. This time I am talking about SQL Source Control. Simple to use, simple to add a database to be under Change Control, which really is the goal. Don’t take me wrong, Visual Studio is a great tool, yet it is a developer’s tool. As a DBA or Database Developer (referring to an individual who codes T-SQL) we want to launch SQL Server Management Studio and be able to control ...
The button to jump directly to a work item by specifying its ID looks to be on the Work Item Tracking toolbar by default in VS / TFS 2010. This button is not on the toolbar by default in VS / TFS 2008 though. To add it yourself just go to… Read more at http://blog.danskingdom.com... ...
In TFS2008, deleting a build removes it from the database itself. If you delete a build called Build_20110423.1 or 1.0.0.1 from Build Explorer and trigger the build again then you will see that new builds starts with same number (Build_20110423.1 or 1.0.0.1) but not with an incremental number (Build_20110423.2 or 1.0.0.2). But, it doesn’t work the same way in TFS2010. I queued a build in TFS2010 which got failed with Build Number 1.0.14.0 due to compilation errors. I wanted to reuse the same build ...
The error seems to be quite simplistic, but you might need to do quite a bit to resolve this. I created a new BI site and was welcomed by the Error Message "The WorkBook cannot be opened". Did some google and tried to find out a solution. Found a good post which kinda came to the rescue to resolve this irritant. You can follow the article by Jeremy to resolve the issue: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jja... ...
*Moved to: In-Place upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 with move to new domain I had a particularly complicated upgrade this time that required me to do two things: In-Place upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 Move new TFS 2010 server from one domain to another I followed Vasu Sankaran’s post on Guidance for upgrading to TFS 2010 along with domain move to make sure I did not fall into any of the known pitfalls, but unfortunately everything went screwy when we tried to move domain. Read more...Follow my ...
A little while back we published the Search Work Items for TFS 2010 extension in the Visual Studio Gallery. Noah Coad recently added Cory and I as Developers on the existing Search Work Items CodePlex project. Over the weekend I uploaded the new source code containing our Visual Studio and TFS 2010 updates. Feel free to check out the source code. You can run the code locally but just be sure you have the Visual Studio 2010 SDK installed and you are pointing at your experimental instance of Visual ...
In February I did a post about moving to DiscountASP.Net TFS Hosting from SVN. I promised to give some feedback a few months later to say how we were finding it. Well, it has been 2 months and no headaches yet. So far we have been running 5 projects on TFS on DiscountASP.Net service with work items / bug items and web access and the service has been 100% stable. So good job DiscountASP.Net If anyone is interested in finding out more about their hosting solutions I am quite happy to give them a plug ...
It seems odd that in 2011 there is no such thing as a requirements capture language. Martin Fowler describes this as the yawning crevice of doom in software - http://martinfowler.com/bli... , http://www.infoq.com/news/2... When I am building code it is ludicrous that I need to read a perpetually changing 50 page Word document or Excel spreadsheet, or worse a set of UML diagrams that are totally disconnected from reality. We need a standardized ...
Full Disclaimer: Since I am on the GeeksWithBlog.NET Influencer list, I was issued a free 1-year subscription to DiscountASP.NET TFS2010 remote hosting. With that said, the thoughts/opinions located below are my own. I’ve always like Team Foundation Server. The main thing that I’ve hated about it was installing/maintaining it. I’d rather spend that time learning more about things such as Silverlight/WPF/WP7. I really didn’t know what to expect as we use another source control at work and I’ve never ...
If you have a lot of TFS build definitions for your projects, its been a bit of a hassle that there is no way to organize and manage them in Team Explorer other than a long flat list. Well, the good folks at Inmeta have released the Inmeta Build Explorer tool which displays build definitions in a hierarchy where names use a . notation to delineate the hierarchy. Since most folks have been implementing a naming standard for builds which at least organize build definitions for ordering, this doesn’t ...
This weekend we at Inmeta release a free Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer extensions that solves the problem with the Builds node in the Team Explorer not being hierarchic. For some reason, this part of the Team Explorer didn’t get the nice hierarchical folder structure that the Work items node got in 2010. The result is that, for a company that has several hundreds of builds in the same team project, it becomes very hard to navigate. The solution that we implemented is very simple and uses a naming ...
We have just released a free extension for Visual Studio which adds a Builds Explorer with folders to the Team Explorer. The extension can be downloaded from Visual Studio Gallery or just search for Inmeta in Tools/Extension Manager. The documentation and issue tracking can be found at the codeplex site for the project http://tfsbuildfolders.code... and source code is available there. The Build explorer is based on using a convention of separators in the build definition names. See Brian Harry’s ...
Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Often it is handy to organise BizUnit tests into test lists. This way longer running tests and edge case tests can be removed from check-in builds keep them running a bit more quickly. However, updating a .vsmdi test lists for each individual test method is time consuming. A better solution is to use the new Category attribute that comes with MSTest in .NET4 (nUnit has supported a categories feature for a while). In the TFS build processes, the ...
I’m trying to setup TFS Lab Management on a new server and I ran into a really weird issue trying to configure it that I figured I’d share the solution to in case anybody else encountered it. This was a brand new machine, I installed Windows Server 2008 R2, all the Windows Updates, joined the machine to the domain, then started running through the Lab Management Install Guide: Configuring Lab Management for the First Time I had a previously created Domain Account called TFSLAB created specifically ...
Introducing the concept of “first class branches” is a significant improvement as part of the 2010 release with respect to version control. Not only does it help to distinguish between folders and branches, but it enables branch visualizations. Let us see improvements in detail. · In TFS2008, you don’t know which of the folders are Branches: All folders looks the same, all have the folder icon. Now, In TFS 2010 there is a new icon that shows which of the folder is a Branch. · There is no visual means ...
I have always liked how SfTS works, and the functionality it offers. In an earlier assessment I wrote of their toolset, the only issue I had encountered was the migration of environment that had been created and worked on for a while in the TFS 2008 world using SfTS 2.0 to the TFS 2010 SfTS 3.0. There were several elements (Work Items and such) that were not moving correctly. Anyway, that is now in the past! Congratulations to Crispin Parker and Team for the release of the Migration Tool. You can ...
A very common scenario while performing TFS builds is to increment version number of the assemblies. There are quite a few approaches of which I would like to share two links: Ewald Hofman’s Approach: http://www.ewaldhofman.nl/p... Richard Bank’s Approach : http://www.richard-banks.or... Both these approaches work well, however ...
In the last month or so I have been able to test and experience first hand the offering from discountasp.net for hosted TFS 2010. This first part is a description of the setup process for the account itself and getting some additional information on what you will find through the portal on their site. Not long ago, I posted a little tidbit on hosting TFS. Through it I also did a shameless plug to my employer, our services and the type of hosting we recommend. So, wouldn’t me running on discountasp.net ...
In my previous blogpost I informed you about the issues with Windows Explorer in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2, concerning NTFS handling. To get some more insight in the problem I tried to find the source of the behavior by using Sysinternals Process Monitor (My favorite tool). With this tool you can see the issue happening, but unfortunately it does not bring us the solution of the problem.
Disclosure: I performed the following activities on my Windows 7 SP1 system, Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and a local Basic installation of TFS 2010. As with any deployment of a service pack into a server environment, take your recommended precautions and be aware of the changes you are putting in. With that said, make sure you backup your databases, and that you have an exit/rollback strategy in the event of an unexpected situation. Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 corresponds to KB2182621. ...
Soma was the keynote speaker at TechEd Middle East in Dubai. And during this, he announced a couple of items being let out the door to now being releases. First, Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Available for subscribers on March 8th, and the rest of the world on March 10th. TFS-Project Integration Feature Pack, Visual Studio Load Test Feature pack and Lightswitch Beta 2 are also part of the releases out and available. Check Soma’s blog … http://blogs.msdn.com/b/som... ...
Microsoft released a PILE of Visual Studio goodness today: Visual Studio 2010 SP1(Including TFS SP1) Finally done with remembering which GDR packs, KB Patches, etc need to be installed with a new VS/TFS 2010 deployment. Just grab the SP1. It’s available today for MSDN Subscribers and March 10th for public download. TFS-Project Server Integration Feature Pack MSDN Subscribers got another little treat today with the TFS-Project Server integration feature pack. We can now get project rollups and portfolio ...
I have been using the various versions of the Microsoft Windows product line since NT4 and I really thought I knew the ins and outs about the NTFS filesystem by now. There were always a few rules of thumb to understand what happens if you move data around. These rules were: "If you copy data, the copied data will inherit the permissions of the location it is being copied to. The same goes for moving data between disk partitions. Only when you move data within the same partition, the permissions are ...
There is an update available for the TFS Power Tools and the TFS Build Power Tools. Among the updates to the Tools: Changes to the Team Foundation Server Backups Add-In for TFS Admin Console. Added functionality to the Windows Shell Extension. Changes to the tfpt command line tool that allows you to script build management commands. For a full detail of the changes, read Brian Harry’s post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bha... ...
*Moved to: Do you know how to move the Team Foundation Server cacheThere are a number of reasons why you may want to change the folder that you store the TFS Cache. It can take up “some” amount of room so moving it to another drive can be beneficial. This is the source control Cache that TFS uses to cache data from the database. Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...
The best intentions were having me at perhaps posting more than twice a month, and here we are and … well it has been busy. There has been a lot of SharePoint 2010 already in this first number of weeks of the year, a good amount of TFS 2010, but even better working quite actively on two topics that I enjoy quite a bit … Windows Azure and Application Lifecycle Management. And there is more to come around those two. Through the influencers program with Geekswithblogs and Discountasp.net I got access ...
We are now successfully, able build Dynamics NAV solutions using the TFS Build workflow mechanisms. Lots of test builds were made, the builds can restore the NAV Database and start from a fresh solution, take latest of the NAV objects and then import it to Navision and call the compile method. The workflow is also able to generate FOB files as output which can be directly shipped to the customers. I think this is the First in the world implementation of the TFS build concepts in conjunction with ...
The Past A few years ago my small software company made the jump from storing code on a shared folder to source code control. At the time we had evaluated a few of the options and settled on Tortoise SVN. The main motivation for going the SVN route was that we found a great plugin for Visual Studio that allowed us to avoid the command prompt for uploading changes (like I said we are windows programmers… command prompt bad!! ) and it was free. Up to now we have been pretty happy with SVN as it removed ...
While it was very quiet here on my blog during the last months, this was not at all true for the rest of my professional life. The simple story is that I was too busy to find the time for authoring blog posts (and you might see from my previous ones that they’re usually not of the ‘Hey, I’m currently reading X’ or ‘I’m currently thinking about Y’ kind…). Anyway. Among the things I did during the last months were setting up a TFS environment (2010) and introducing a development team to the MSTest ...
After a couple of year hiatus from blogging at Geeks With Blogs, I’m back! I’m still blogging about Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010 over at Team System Rocks (soon to undergo some major revisions), so expect to see some cross postings from there. Here though, I expect to focus on System Center technologies (mostly System Center Operations Manager and System Center Service Manager, with some of the others thrown in there too, as that is my day job now.. I’ll also use this blog to start tracking my ...
This is long overdue. But here it is. In the previous two sections I have discussed on how I got a CMMI v4.2 to take on the same fields as v5 and therefore be able to communicate with MTM and Lab Manager. And that was quite a success. Yet when I opened up Lab Management while it was fully aware of the VMs being there, it refused to let me enroll them into an environment. It kept stating there was no suitable host to deploy the VM to, error TF259115. This was an indication something was not matching ...
On January 29th Etienne Tremblay and I presented infront of roughly 120 people in Ottawa a 7 hours "sketch" on how VS 2010 and TFS 2010 can help both devs and testers in their respective work. The presentation focused on how a testers' work can positively influence a developers' work and vice versa. The format was quite unusual as I said it's a "sketch" where Etienne and I "ignore" the audience and we do as if we were at work and the audience is sort of "spying" on us. In all I'm quite pleased with ...
Hey everyone, I know it’s been an eternity since I blogged but I have so much to do that I unfortunately need to prioritize. Vincent Grondin and I did a 7h presentation on the new developer and tester tools available in the VS 2010 suite. It was a blast. We did it in front of an audience (around 120) and it was taped. We did it as a play and really didn’t look at the crowd at all we were training each other on the technology. It is now available for anyone that would like to watch it at this location: ...
I’m currently writing a large piece on MSMQ security and wanted to check I was covering the right areas. I have some doubts as I’ve seen the occasional MSMQ forum question where a poster has used the word “security” in different contexts to what I was expecting. So here are the areas I plan to cover: Message security encryption on the wire (SSL and IPSEC) encryption of the message (MSMQ encryption) encryption of the payload (data encryption) signing and authentication Queue security SIDs and ACLs ...
*Moved to: How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)Read more...Follow my new blog on http://blog.hinshelwood.com ...
This error occured on our TFS2008 (RTM) build server after installing VS2010. This is caused because VS2010 updates the MSBuild targets file Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Bu... but not the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Bu... file (which preforms the tasks mentioned in the targets file). To resolve you need to update TFS (build) server with SP1. See this article. HTH Tim ...
To cook this recipe you need the following ingredients: 1) An installation of TFS 2010 Team Build Service on a server 2) Visual Studio 2010 for cooking 3) Use the following Hints on the web: a) http://www.codeproject.com/... – use this wrapper to perform the basic tasks b) http://www.richard-banks.or... – for ideas on how to customize the build templates And finally lot of patience and luck, took me about 120 failed builds ...
Mario Cardinal, the host of the Visual Studio Talk Show, is quite happy these days. He works with the Urban Turtle team and they received significant support from Microsoft. Brian Harry, who is the Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server, has published an outstanding blog post about Urban Turtle that says: "...awesome Scrum experience for TFS.” You can read Brian Harry's blog post at the following URL: http://urbanturtle.com/awesome ...
The build process template and custom activity described in this post is available here: http://cid-ee034c9f620cd58d... Running code metrics has been available since VS 2008, but only from inside the IDE. Yesterday Microsoft finally released Visual Studio Code Metrics Power Tool 10.0, a command line tool that lets you run code metrics on your applications. This means that it is now possible to perform code metrics analysis on the ...
Im currently in the process of migrating our many BizTalk projects from MKS source control to TFS. While we will be using TFS for work item tracking and source control etc we will be continuing to use Cruise Control for continuous integration although im updating this to CCNet 1.5 at the same time. Ill post a few things as much as a reminder to myself about some of the problems we come across. Problem After the first build of our code the next time a build is triggered an error is encountered by ...
I presented at VBUG last year and can confirm that they put on a really good event. This year I stood aside for my “replacement” Steve Plank to work his magic. Worth checking out… VBUG SPRING CONFERENCE 28/29 March 2011 Wokefield Park, Mortimer, Reading RG7 3AH Day One (Mon 28 March): Developing SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010 - Dave McMahon Cache Out with Windows Server AppFabric – Phil Pursglove Extending your Corporate Network in to the Windows Azure Data Centre with Windows Azure Connect ...
It’s with great pleasure that I can announce registration for Prairie Developer Conference 2011 is now open! This year we’ve expanded the conference to include more sessions, more speakers, and more technologies! Presenters are coming from across Canada and the US, and we have an amazing group of sponsors supporting the conference! One of those sponsors is Urban Turtle, a company that makes a Scrum add on for TFS. Each attendee will receive 5 FREE licenses for the product (a $450 value)! We also ...
Here is the simple function I added to my powershell profile: function create-tfstask ($desc) { tfpt workitem /new $workItemType /collection:$serverUrl /fields:"Title=$($desc);Ass... To=$assignee;AreaId=$areaId... } To find the AreaId and IterationId for your project/versions, just look at a bug you know is setup correctly: PS C:\> tfpt query /collection:http://3bs001vs... /wiql:"select AreaId,IterationId from workitems where ID = 879" Next I hooked this into ...
This morning I was working on a client application after I made my last post on Ben’s article about shared databases. So, I went to check in my code. TFS build ran a bit and then rejected it. The services layer was throwing an exception. Took a bit to track down the exception occurred in the database call to a sproc. So, what was going on? Turns out someone changed a sproc in the shared database. So when my code checked in the unit tests failed. Perfect example of the evil of a shared development ...
I'm sure that over time you've run into the dreaded "File transport does not have read/write privileges for receive location "C:\Flatfile\SAPTestIn\".". Usually you simply go to the folder and either give the BizTalk account full permission (bad) or Everyone full permission (really bad). So for a production environment, what is the absolute minimum permissions required? For the Receive File Adapter the explicit permission are: NTFS Attribute Property Name DELETE Delete Files FILE_READ_DATA List Folder ...
Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the beta release of its “Elastic Beanstalk” Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. The platform Initially is available to Java developers only, but it sounds pretty snazzy: you wrap your code up as a Java WAR file (a Web Application Archive), upload it and deploy it. There are tools developers can integrate into Eclipse to do the upload or you can use the AWS Management Console. Wait a few minutes and then visit your app at http://myapp.elasticbeansta... ...