Etienne's VSTS World

Well... it's been a pretty crazy year! here are a few of the highlights ... around the world (literally) in 65 days, 8 countries, 100,000 air miles, speaker at Devteach for the second year in a row, VSTS MVP for the second year in a row, speaker at the first Montreal Code camp, 15 year at EDS and last but probably the best, 20th year with my lovely wife.  I don't know where I would be without her...

pfeeeww ;-) man I'm tired after reading this again.  So what does next year look like... Well I'll probably speak at Devteach again this year, I'm going to the MVP summit, I'm hopefully going to do a 1 day hands-on-lab on Team System (BYOLaptop kind) I'm still working on the details.  Community involvement wherever possible. Hopefully less travel to be closer to my family.

I'm also going to try to do some blog series on TFS with remains one of my primary interests... :-)

I'd like to give special thanks for Guy, Mario, Jeffbe, Aaron, Steve and Wayne for being there when to going got tough and sticking with me and believing in me.  These are the best years career wise and it's in large part because of you guys, it hopefully can only get better.  I'd also like to thank the User Group members for their always great discussion about development and architecture and for their friendship hopefully we continue this in 2007.

If it wasn't for my family to get back to it wouldn't be worth it... :-) 

Finally winter made here in Montreal and Gatineau

Happy New Year 2007 everyone.

Cheers,

ET

Update: After a deadly headlock by the Mad Mexican I feel "compelled" to add him to the highlights of the year, I saw him at DevTeach and I must say that was very funny.  Thanks for the laughs D'arcy.

Whoohoo folks! the long awaited SP for VSTx, Express and TFS is finally out you can get it right here.

Also there is a hotfix to apply prior to installing the SP for TFS make sure you read all about it here, essentially it put TFS to "sleep" while patches are installed.  There is nothing special to do, just install this hotfix and whenever you apply another hotfix, SP, etc TFS will go to sleep prior to install that's it guys.

Happy Patching

ET

Update: Save some time and space installing the SP by disabling the patch cache Heath Stewarts explains how to disable the Windows installer Patch Cache which for VSTS will take a whooping 1.3G of disk space... go have a read.

Update 2: Installing SP for VSTx and Pro/Standard (not express) on Vista

First create a cmd file with the following content (this is based on Heath's info)

reg export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer installer.reg
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer /v MaxPatchCacheSize /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
net stop "Windows Installer"
start /wait VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.exe
reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer /v MaxPatchCacheSize /f
reg import installer.reg
net stop "Windows Installer"
del /q installer.reg 2>nul

Put this file in the same directory as the patch file, and start a cmd window as administrator (very important) navigate to the patch directory and execute the cmd file.

Cheers,

ET

Update 3: Sheeesh I took 1 1/2 hours to install on my laptop (even with the no cache).  I remember if you add /quiet at the end of the start /wait xxx /quiet it may take a little bit less time.  This will obviously vary based on your machine and memory and disk speed but wow that was long ;-).

Update 4: So I started installing the SP on my test VM and bam Error 1718: File C:\win...\installer\1ac..msp did not pass the digital signature check.  Well it turn out if you look at the KB here that I don't have enough contiguous memory to check the signature... doh! my VM as 1G of virtual memory.  I have applied the workaround and was able to install the SP.

Update 5: Well well it seems Heath has did it again! ;-).  Check here for a procedure on how to slipstream the SP1 into your original version of VSTS.  I'm definitely going to give this a try, the large disk requirement, loooong install time does warrant spending time on this.

You got Team Suite? Download the trial version here and install over it.  TEfDP will automatically adjust to full version see here for details or you can download 3.8 gig and install over TE and it will also adjust itself (I personally prefer the 20 Meg download).

Got Team Dev/Arc/Test then you need to buy the full version since it's a new sku on the same level as the other 3.

Got Pro, well sorry but you'll need to upgrade to one of the Team Skus and TEfDP is a good one.

By the way, TEfDP is free if you own Team Suite so rush to install...

Also you must also have a SQL Server 2005 instance (Developer, Enterprise, Express, or Evaluation edition) installed on your dev workstation to use TEfDP.

Good luck

Cheers,

ET

PS Congrats to the DataDude team on shipping last week! This makes the Team Suite pretty appealing now.

Update: There is a new add-on for Team suite so it is less confusing check it out here

So I was at the "Ask the Expert" all day today at the Vista, Office and Exchange 2007 product launch in Montreal.  I meet a ton of people that had a lot of great questions.  I hope I was able to provide you with as much information has you needed and will be better prepared to solve all your difficult problems.  I really like doing those shows because I also learn a lot of things from other expert.  I also notice how much "stuff" I know which always amazes me ;-).  I really love technology and imparting knowledge is a very important thing for me.  I plan on continuing as long as people are interesting in hearing me :-).

Thanks for coming and asking me those questions it was my privilege to help you guys.

Cheers,

ET