Tuesday, December 30, 2008

New VSTS Virtual Machines

The VSTS Virtual Machines are all updates with fresh bits and expiration dates and now available in 4 different flavors on Microsoft Download Center thanks to Brian Randell

The new Virtual Machines are a VSTS “all-up” image with Team Foundation Server, Team Build, Team Explorer and Team Suite with the latest SP1 installed, and a TFS “only” image with just Team Foundation Server, Team Build and Team Explorer with the latest SP1 installed. But they are produced as Virtual PC 2007/Virtual Server 2005 R2 Compatible images and Hyper-V Compatible images to suite everybody’s needs …

The images are updated with the following:

  • The latest Virtual Machine additions or Integration Services Components.
  • All of the latest Windows Updates as of December 1, 2008.
  • Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1
  • Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite SP1
  • Team System Web Access 2008 SP1
  • Team Foundation Power Tools, October 2008 Update.
  • The latest MSSCCI Provider.
  • Team Explorer 2005 (this allows you to work with TFS from Visual Studio 2005 which is installed so that you can edit and customize TFS reports)
  • The GDR for the product formally known as Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition (aka Data Dude).
  • Current Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and Background Info.

All can be downloaded as follows:

Enjoy :)

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Language Releases

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Team just released 6 additional languages of the recently released GDR on Microsoft Download Center as follows:

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

VSTS Database Project Import Scripts Add-In

Patrick Sirr posted a detailed post about the latest VSTS Database Edition GDR Import Scripts Add-In that is amazing.

In this blog I’ll introduce you to the Import Scripts add-in to the General Distribution Release (GDR) for Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition. With this add-in Visual Studio can import multiple scripts to populate a target database project. I’ve included the source code but, in order to compile the install project you’ll need to install Votive 3.0 (I used 3.0.4707.0).

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Team Foundation Server Build 2008 Reference DeskSheet – V2.0

Mike Fourie had a few minor updates on the handy reference to aid your work with building software in TFS 2008.

System Center 2008 Management Packs for TFS 2008

System Center 2008 Management Packs for TFS 2008 is now available for download on Microsoft Download Center

The Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 Management Pack monitors exposed services of TFS. This management pack includes event rules and monitors. It is designed to proactively monitor quality and availability of TFS services and even automate recovery in some scenarios.

Feature Summary

  • Auto discovery of TFS components
  • Leverages ASP.NET MP and SQL MP
  • Implements containment hierarchy reflecting logical architecture of the Product
  • Implements a proper health model using Monitors
  • Contains tasks, diagnostic and recovery for certain failures
  • Events indicating service outages
  • Alerts indicating configuration issues and connected data source changes
  • Verification that all dependant services are running
  • Targeted running of BPA against TFS Servers from Operator Console
New monitoring capabilities can be easily added.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Team System Web Access Translations

Some of Team System MVPs started working on creating some translations for Team System Web Access through CodePlex as the TSWA Community Translation Project

The great work resulted in 7 new languages that are now available through CodePlex as follows:

  • Croatian
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Turkish
  • Danish
  • Swedish
  • Polish
  • Dutch

Another release is currently in progress that will contain:

  • Norwegian
  • Arabic
  • Portugese

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

VSTS 2010 Architecture: Prologue

Cameron Skinner wrote an amazing post discussing the composition of VSTS 2010, giving some higher level descriptions of the parts that make up the whole product.

It's a must read post ... Well done Skinner ...

TFS Collaboration Providers

Team Foundation Server Collaboration Providers is a new CodePlex Project that targets Community Contribution for Collaboration providers for different IM and VoIP integration as the TFS 2008 Power Tools enables rich integration with other team members via IM and VoIP chat.

The Power Tools integrates with Live Communicator and Windows Live Messenger Out of the Box.

Skype Provider Initial version is now available as the first Collaboration Provider in the project with more to come ...

Monday, November 17, 2008

TFS 2008 Web Services List

Never thought of listing all TFS 2008 Web Services before until I needed to start access them directly.

Below is the full list of Web Services which comes in two versions, V1.0 and V2.0 for backward compatibility I believe ...

Thursday, November 13, 2008

TFS Sticky Buddy

Sticky Buddy is a Digital Dashboard that will run off Team Foundation Server and allow teams to display information on the status of their development on one or many projects.

The application will consist of a main screen that queries a TFS Server and pulls a list of projects that the user can select for display and within each project it will display the iteration tree.

This tree will be displayed as a set of concentric columns that are populated with "Change Requests" and "Requirements" that are currently within that iteration path.

Each of the Work Items displayed will show limited information about itself, which user it is assigned to, its Area and title. But it will also display the number of sub items within each item. This will give an indication of the length of time necessary to complete all of the sub-work items within that iteration so it can be moved on to the next.

A set of rules will determine the color or icons associated with each item based on their status. These rules may include:

  • Is this item overdue?
  • Does this work item have any blocked work items associated with it?
  • Does this work item have any risks associated with it?

Sticky Buddy is available on CodePlex

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

VSTS 2010 PDC Lab Session Available

VSTS 2010 PDC Lab Session is available on Channel 9 that was done by Cameron Skinner

In the spirit of an agile sprint, see how to use the next version of Visual Studio Team System to manage user stories and re-factor existing architecture. Learn how to diagnose real production problems, debug in-production virtual labs, capture test data to eliminate the no-repro bugs, transparently plan, monitor, and adapt software projects.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

VSTS 2008 TFS Power Tools - October 2008 Release

The TFS Power Tools October 2008 Release is now available for download on Microsoft Download Center

New in the October Release

Team Members (NEW!)

  • Adds a new node under each Team Project to the Team Explorer called "Team Members" that identifies people who work on the project.
  • Serves as a "pivot point" for information about and operations on people and teams.

Windows Shell Extension (NEW!)

  • Allows core version control operations within Windows Explorer without using Team Explorer.

PowerShell Support (NEW!)

  • Provides a PowerShell pipeline and cmdlets for TFS. Initial support is for basic version control operations.

TFPT (Updated)

  • tfpt searchcs - the Search Changesets Power Tool brings up a dialog from which the user can search for changesets that match specific combination of criteria including server path, committed date range, committed user, check-in comments and check-in notes.
  • tfpt unshelve /undo - finds all pending changes in your workspace that match the changes in the shelveset and undoes them (including deleting the local files for pending adds).

    Wednesday, November 05, 2008

    Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

    Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is available for download from Microsoft Download Center

    This package is an add-on for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2.
    It can be installed on top of either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, and it provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.

    This download will install the following:

    • Silverlight 2 developer runtime
    • Silverlight 2 software development kit
    • KB956453 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
      and/or
      KB956485 for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1
    • Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
      and/or
      Silverlight Tools for Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1

    Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 includes:

    • Visual Basic and C# Project templates
    • Intellisense and code generators for XAML
    • XAML design preview
    • Debugging of Silverlight applications
    • Remote debugging of Silverlight applications for Mac
    • Web reference support
    • WCF Templates
    • Team Build and command line build support
    • Integration with Expression Blend

    .NET Framework 4.0 Types and Namespaces

    Along with all this new features found in Visual Studio 2010, there will be some new types and namespaces available in .NET Framework 4.0.

    A .NET Framework 4.0 Poster is available for the ultimate way of viewing such types and namespaces.

    PDC2008-NETFX4

    I uploaded the poster in a large size to be available for downloading.

    Of course they are subject to change as things are still at a very early stage but it's great to be on track ...

    Thursday, October 30, 2008

    Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio October 2008 CTP Available Now !

    Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio October 2008 CTP is now available for download from Microsoft Download Center

    Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.

    Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio includes:
    • C# and VB Project templates for building Cloud Services
    • Integration with the Development Fabric and Development Storage services
    • Debugging Cloud Service Roles running in the Development Fabric
    • Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages
    • Browsing to the Azure Services Developer Portal
    • Role configuration
    • SSL Certificate selection

    Wednesday, October 29, 2008

    VSTS 2010 Architecture Explorer

    Today I finally started playing around with VSTS 2010 CTP and started get a feel of the new wonders …

    This should be the first post of a series of VSTS 2010 posts out of experiencing the upcoming release …

    My first experience was with the Architecture Explorer, this great new feature of the Architecture Edition, it is a WPF interface for exploring your architecture. It allows you to drill through all of the projects, classes, methods, code metrics, relationships and just about anything else you can think of …

    listingsID_341_levinson0418_1

    The above shows a basic view of the Architecture Explorer. The lists at the top let you select which objects show up on the design surface. At this point, the design surface is a read-only and all navigation is done via the lists.

    If you look closely, you can see that for each object (solution, project, class, etc.) you can select items contained within, objects which contain the object and objects/methods which are called by the object. You can also see which interfaces are implemented by an object, run code metrics on an object and perform various other pieces of analysis. The resulting views on the design surface can be saved as .XPS files and distributed.

    The design surface also allows you to view the information in different ways. The different views are as follows:

    • The Dependency Matrix View
      • The nodes appear in a matrix and dependencies between nodes are indicated at intersections of the matrix.
    • The Vertical Tree View
      • Nodes appear from top to bottom in order of most dependent to least dependent.
    • The Horizontal Tree View
      • Nodes appear from left to right in order of most dependent to least dependent.
    • The Stack View
      • Nodes appear from top to bottom in order of highest-level to lowest-level.
    • The Nested Stack View
      • Nodes appear as nested nodes with higher-level nodes that contain lower-level nodes.
    • The Force Directed Layout
      • Nodes appear as clusters or hubs with most dependent nodes near the center of the clusters and the least dependent nodes appearing at the outer edges of the clusters.

    VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR RC1 is now available

    Gert Drapers has just announced that VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR Release Candidate 1 is now available for download from Microsoft Download Center.

    This version will provide an upgrade path to the RTM so it worth trying out …

    The documentation as well is available for downloading.

    Tuesday, October 28, 2008

    Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP & Feedback

    Visual Studio 2010 CTP is now available for download on Microsoft Connect along with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP Feedback page that is very helpful.

    Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. Designed to address the latest needs of developers, Visual Studio delivers key innovations in the following pillars: Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management, Enabling emerging trends, Inspiring developer delight and Riding the next generation platform wave. For more information, check out the Overview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0

    Sunday, October 26, 2008

    Team Foundation Build Load Balancer

    A new project is released on CodePlex called Team Foundation Build Load Balancer that balances builds between the build agents defined in a Team Project and thus reducing the time developer's wait for builds to complete.

    It’s a very simple command-line application that is designed to run in a scheduled job to balance queued builds between multiple build agents irrespective of which build agent it was queued on.

    Tuesday, October 21, 2008

    VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR September CTP is now available

    Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition GDR September CTP is now available for download through Microsoft Download Center

    In addition to providing support for SQL Server 2008 database projects, this release incorporates many previously released Power Tools as well as several new features.

    The new features include distinct Build and Deploy phases, Static Code Analysis and improved integration with SQL CLR projects.

    Database Edition no longer requires a Design Database. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to install an instance of SQL Express or SQL Server prior to using Database Edition.

    SQL Server Support
    SQL Server 2008

    • All new data types:
      Intrinsic (date, datetime2, datetimeoffset, time)
      Built-in SQL CLR types (geography, geometry, hierarchyid)
    • New DML
      Merge, table parameters, …

    SQL Server Configuration Options

    • Server option settings will be verified prior to deployment or set during deployment additional 1st Class Object Type Support
    • Rules, defaults, Asymmetric keys, symmetric keys, certificates, …

    Projects
    Server Projects

    • Server objects and option settings may be implemented in a separate Server Project
    • This enables a team to define a standard a configuration for their SQL servers and reference it from their Database Projects

    Partial projects

    • Allowing code sharing between projects by including files from a different project, where the code is included as-is from the originating project and the source code control ownership remains with the originating project
    • This enables code reuse and single sourcing while having a single deployment unit

    Composite projects

    • References to other database projects or .dbschema files that contribute to the same deployment unit.
    • This enables the separation of development roles and responsibilities and composition of Databases using multiple projects.

    Single sourcing of external artifacts
    SQL-CLR references allow the user to create a reference to a SQL-CLR project or SQL-CLR assembly. This automatically becomes an ASSEMBLY type in the Database Project

    Build and Deploy
    The Build process now produces a separate portable schema output that is fed in to a redistributable deployment engine
    A redistributable deployment engine. For example, to implement a setup application that deploys the Database Project.

    Refactoring
    Preservation of Intent

    • Enables the deployment of refactoring changes as intended by the user (renames are deployed as renames not as drop/add statements for example)

    New Refactoring Operations
    Wildcard Expansion
    Move Schema
    Fully Qualify
    Extensibility point which enables the ability to develop and deploy custom refactoring types and targets

    Schema Compare
    Now supports comparing Projects, Databases or dbschema files in any combination. For example, Project to Project, which has not been possible until now.
    Object Type Filtering
    Additional ignore filtering options

    T-SQL Static Code Analysis
    Including the ability to develop and deploy custom rules

    Dependency Viewer
    View the dependency relationship between objects in your schema

    Unit testing
    Supports execution with other ADO.NET providers

    Data Generation
    Design-time enhancements

    • Smaller .dgen file
    • Support for undo/redo
    • Foreign key replacement
    • Separation of population status into new display window

    Runtime enhancements

    • By default uses SqlBulkCopy to populate target tables
    • Capability to register different outputs for generated data – i.e. generate to Excel or to file so you can use BCP to load
    • By registering a custom output we have the capability to execute scripts at different points during data generation (i.e. before start/after completion or before/after a table

    Extensibility
    Data Generators
    Statistical Data Distribution
    Test Conditions
    Static Code Analysis Rules
    Refactoring Types
    Refactoring Target

    Visual Studio Team System 2010 Videos

    Thanks to Charles Sterling for the great Visual Studio Team System 2010 Videos list below

    1. Announcing Visual Studio Team System 2010
    2. Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9!
    3. Cameron Skinner: Visual Studio Team System 2010 – Architecture
    4. "Top-down" design with Visual Studio Team System 2010
    5. "Bottom-up" Design with Visual Studio Team System 2010 Architect
    6. ARCast.TV - Peter Provost on what’s coming for Architects in Visual Studio Team System
    7. Team Foundation Server 2010 Setup and Administration
    8. An early look at Team Foundation Build 2010 with Jim Lamb
    9. Enterprise Team Foundation Server Management with Mario Rodriguez
    10. Update on Team Foundation Server Migration and Synchronization
    11. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Database Edition: Overview
    12. Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
    13. Microsoft Visual Studio Team S…er: How We Use It at Microsoft
    14. Team Foundation Server 2010 Setup and Administration
    15. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Software Diagnostics and Quality for Services
    16. Architecture without Big Design Up Front
    17. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: Leveraging Virtualization to Improve Code Quality with Team Lab
    18. Branching and Merging Visualization with Team Foundation Server 2010
    19. Brian Harry: Team Foundation Server 2010
    20. Better Software Quality with Visual Studio Team System 2010
    21. Manual Testing with Visual Studio Team System 2010
    22. Historical Debugger and Test Impact Analysis in Visual Studio Team System 2010
    23. What’s new in Visual Studio Team System 2010: Feature: Historical Debugger

    You can check Charles' post for more details ...

    Monday, October 20, 2008

    VSTS 2008 SP1 and IE8 ...

    IE8 is coming up soon as Beta 2 is already out in the open, and one of the major changes in IE8 - I actually just came across it by chance - is that IE8 opens up to 6 concurrent connections per host compared to only 2 in IE7.

    That leads to the question of Does VSTS support IE8? Will it really open the 6 connections per host?

    Well luckly the answer to both questions are YES ...

    • VSTS 2008 SP1 has the IE8 Option in the Browser Mix
    • By testing IE8 in the load test, it worked :)
      It opened 6 concurrent connections per host.
      The test was created by having a load test with one web test in it, and one concurrent user, once ran against IE7 and another run against IE8.

    Thursday, October 09, 2008

    Using TFS to Develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies Applications

    This article discusses methods and strategies about how to use Team Foundation Build with SharePoint Server 2007 application projects, including recommendations and procedures to conduct automated and scheduled builds for SharePoint Server 2007 application development and deployment.

    MSBuild Extension Pack

    MSBuild Extension Pack is a new CodePlex project which is the successor to the FreeToDev MSBuild Tasks Suite and provides a collection of over 170 MSBuild tasks designed for the .Net 3.5 Framework.

    It includes the following tasks:
    • System Items:
      Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound
    • Code:
      Assemblies, CAB Files, Code Signing, File Detokenisation, GUID’s, Mathematics, Strings, Threads, Zip
    • Applications:
      BizTalk 2006, Email, IIS7, MSBuild, SourceSafe, StyleCop, Team Foundation Server, Visual Basic 6, WMI

    Each task is documented and provided with an example in the help file. Where applicable, tasks are remote enabled, simply specify a MachineName and the task will target the remote machine.

    Tuesday, October 07, 2008

    Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Overview

    Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. Designed to address the latest needs of developers, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework deliver key innovations in the following pillars:

    • Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
      Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) crosses many roles within an organization and traditionally not every one of the roles has been an equal player in the process. Visual Studio Team System 2010 continues to build the platform for functional equality and shared commitment across an organization’s ALM process.
    • Enabling emerging trends
      Every year the industry develops new technologies and new trends. With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft delivers tooling and framework support for the latest innovations in application architecture, development and deployment.
    • Inspiring developer delight
      Ever since the first release of Visual Studio, Microsoft has set the bar for developer productivity and flexibility. Visual Studio 2010 continues to deliver on the core developer experience by significantly improving upon it for roles involved with the software development process.
    • Riding the next generation platform wave
      Microsoft continues to invest in the market leading operating system, productivity application and server platforms to deliver increased customer value in these offerings. With Visual Studio 2010 customers will have the tooling support needed to create amazing solutions around these technologies.
    • Breakthrough Departmental Applications
      Customers continue to build applications that span from department to the enterprise. Visual Studio 2010 will ensure development is supported across this wide spectrum of applications.

    Read the full article on MSDN

    Saturday, August 30, 2008

    Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool Released

    A new release of the Team System Web Access Power Tools have been released on Microsoft Donwload Center.

    New With Service Pack 1

    Features in Team System Web Access

    Tuesday, August 12, 2008

    VS/VSTS/TFS/.NET 3.5 SP1s are Released !!

    Finally Visual Studio/Visual Studio Team System 2008, Team Foundation Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1s are Released !!
    They bring great chunck of good value, bug fixes and SQL Server 2008 support.

    According to my research and knowledge the improvements include:
    • SQL Server 2008 Support
    • ADO.NET Entity Designer
    • Improved WPF Designers
    • .NET performance improvements
    • TFS Improvements that includes Add to Source Control Dialogs enhancements, Drag & Drop files into Source Control Explorer, Unbound files Version Control, Date/Time column for Checkins, Ribbon support for Office 2007 and Performance & Scale improvements.

    Tuesday, March 11, 2008

    Project Server 2007 VSTS Connector Version 2.0

    The latest Project Server to TFS Connector was just released on CodePlex.

    This release of the PS2007 VSTS Connector is targeted to work with Team Foundation Server 2008 and resolves several bugs that were reported in the first two releases.

    They've done thier best to ensure that this Connector is easy to install and well documented.

    Future versions of Team System will have native integration with Project Server, in the meantime this Connector solution is the best way to integrate the two Microsoft products. This solution builds on the previous PS2003 VSTS Connector, published on GotDotNet. This solution is intended to provide guidance, provided as source code that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects.

    Sunday, February 17, 2008

    Visual Studio 2008 Contribution Award

    Today I just received my Visual Studio 2008 Contribution Award for the lasting contribution made to Microsoft Visual Studio :)

    I'd like to thank Dina Lasheen, Program Manager - Developer Division - Microsoft for the Nomination.
    To show our appreciation, please accept our thank you gift. Thank you again for helping us deliver an amazing Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
    S.Somasegar

    Saturday, February 16, 2008

    VSTS 2008 Database Edition Power Tools now available

    VSTS 2008 Database Edition Power Tools is a set of enhancements and tools that complement and improve the user experience of VSTS Database Edition 2008

    This release updates the Power Tools for the Database Edition to work with Visual Studio 2008 and provides several new features. The new features include two custom unit test conditions, a new Data Generation Wizard, and new MSBuild tasks to support running TSQL Static Code Analysis from the command line. The updated features include 5 refactoring types, a dependency viewer, additional data generators and editors, 2 MSBuild tasks for Schema and Data Compare and the TSQL Static Code Analysis feature

    New Test Conditions for Database Unit Tests
    • ChecksumCondition – You can use this test condition to verify that the checksum of the data set returned by a database unit test matches the checksum of an expected data set.
    • ExpectedSchemaTestCondition – You can use this test condition to verify that the column names and data types of the returned data set match expected values.

    Data Generator Improvements

    • New Data Generator Wizard – This new wizard creates a data generation plan that is configured to copy data from a source database. You can use this wizard when you need to copy most of your data from a live source, but need to make small changes to ensure privacy.

    MSBuild Task Improvements

    • SqlAnalysis Task – You can use this build task to run T-SQL Static Code Analysis from MSBuild.

    TSQL Static Code Analysis

    • Static Code Analysis - A precursor to the functionality that will be in future versions of VSTS that will allow you to perform Static Code Analysis on T-SQL code.

    Refactoring

    • “Move Schema” Refactoring - Allows a user to right click on an object and move it to a different but existing schema
    • SP Rename Generation - Generate a new script that will contain sp_renames for all rename refactored objects that the user can then execute.
    • Wildcard Expansion - Automatically expand the wildcard in a select to the appropriate columns.
    • Fully-Qualified Name Support - Automatically inject fully-qualified names when absent in a script
    • Refactoring extended to Dataset - Refactor into strongly typed dataset definitions

    MSBuild Tasks

    • Data / Schema Compare Build Tasks - MSBuild tasks that can generate scripts as if the user had run the Data / Schema compare UI

    Schema View

    • API Access to Schema View - Insert / Update / Delete to schema View and list schema objects and their associated files

    Dependency Tool Window

    • Dependency Tree - Show the dependencies ( incoming / outgoing ) for selected schema objects in a new tool window

    Miscellaneous Tools

    • Script Preprocessor - Expand SQLCMD variables and include files and command line version (sqlspp.exe) & an MSBuild version ( wraps the command line version )

    The power tool is available on MS Download Center

    Tuesday, February 12, 2008

    Free Download: Hot-Fixes for Visual Studio 2008 (Web Development)

    Microsoft has released a Hot-Fix Roll-up for Visual Studio 2008 available on Connect.

    The hot-fixes address the following issues:

    HTML Source view performance
    • Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
    • “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
    • Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
    • Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
    • The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.

    Design view performance

    • Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.

    HTML editing

    • Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
    • Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.

    JavaScript editing

    • When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
    • JavaScript IntelliSense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.
    • JavaScript IntelliSense does not work when jQuery is used.

    Web Site build performance

    • Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.

    Installation Notes
    For more information on how to download and install the above patch, please check the webdevtools blog post here. In particular, if you are using Windows Vista with UAC enabled, make sure to extract the patch to a directory other than "c:\" (otherwise you'll see an access denied error).

    To verify that this hot-fix patch successfully installed, launch VS 2008 and select the Help->About menu item. Make sure that there is an entry that says Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – ENU (KB946581).

    If you ever want to remove the patch, go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and select Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB946581 under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (or Visual Web Developer Express 2008) and click “Remove".

    Sunday, February 03, 2008

    Team Foundation Build Recipes

    Grant Holiday, Team System MVP has came out with a wonderful site, Team Foundation Build Recipes.

    As a Build Master you've been put in charge of coming up with a central build system for your team. It can be quite daunting at first and you wonder "Where do I start?".

    The purpose of this site is to create and share build recipes with other build masters so that we can all learn and benefit from each other's experience.

    Since the site is called TFSBuild.com, there is a particular focus on MSBuild and Team Foundation Build scripts. But if you have a NAnt script or similar that you think others might find useful post it up.

    The site is published as a wiki and the idea is that anybody can register to add & update content.

    Thanks Grant for the great addition.

    Monday, January 28, 2008

    TFS Admin Tool 1.3 Released For TFS 2008 on CodePlex!

    An updated version of the TFS Admin tool (v 1.3) has been released on CodePlex.

    This version of the tool supports TFS 2008 and WSS 3.0. It can be used to help manage User and Permission settings across TFS, SharePoint and SQL Server Reporting Services platforms.

    Sunday, January 27, 2008

    Source Code Outliner PowerToy for Visual Studio 2008

    The Source Outliner PowerToy is a Visual Studio 2008 extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them with filtering inside the editor is available on MS Download Center.

    The project source code (in both C# and Visual Basic) can be found on the SourceCodeOutliner project on CodePlex.com.

    Friday, January 25, 2008

    Team Build: Modify TFSBuild.proj Template File

    One of the usually made changes in all TFS Builds are setting some Targets and Properties for each and every build. Changing the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets is not a supported and risky scenario as it can be changed from version to another (as happened between TFS05 & TFS08) so the best option is customizing the Template file that generates the TFSBuild.proj file to include those changes by default.

    The template can be found in:
    • [VS2005] C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\1033\tfsbuild.proj
    • [VS2008] C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\1033\tfsbuild.proj

    Note that those templates are found in the PrivateAssemblies folders which can be overwritten by Maintenance and/or Updates so always make sure the output file is correct

    All you have to do is to add your Custom/Overriden Targets, Properties or ItemGroups in their needed locations and Copy the file to each Machine that will create a Team Build.

    Hope that helps.

    Thanks to Steve for the info

    Saturday, January 05, 2008

    VSTS 2008 VPCs

    2 new VSTS 2008 VPCs are now available on MS Download.

    The first one is running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, SP2. It contains a full installation of Team Foundation Server 2008, Team Build 2008, Team Explorer 2008, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite and all necessary prerequisites. Team Foundation Server is installed in workgroup authentication mode and thus does not require a domain controller. The image is over 11 GB uncompressed.

    The second one is is running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, SP2. It contains a full installation of Team Foundation Server 2008, Team Explorer 2008, and all necessary prerequisites. Team Foundation Server is installed in workgroup authentication mode and thus does not require a domain controller. The image is under 7 GB uncompressed.

    Have fun :)