Visual Studio Team System : Team System FAQ

Q: Where can I find documentation for Team System, including walkthroughs?

AskBurton — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:49:00 GMT

A: Product documentation, including walkthroughs, is available by installing the MSDN Library that ships with Team System. In addition, during the Beta 2 timeframe the Visual Studio 2005 Beta Documentation should be updated with the content that ships with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. For more information, see the Visual Studio Team System dev center.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: What is this error in my application event log: "[SyncCss] The specified object has not been registered."

AskBurton — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 01:09:00 GMT

A: This is a known issue in this release. There is no workaround available. When this occurs, you cannot successfully delete a classification node. However, you can still add, move or rename a classification node.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Team System December CTP

Q: When will Visual Studio 2005 be available for purchase, and how much will it cost?

AskBurton — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 00:27:00 GMT

A: The Visual Studio 2005 family of products will be available in Summer 2005. Detailed pricing and licensing will be announced in March.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005

Q: What can cause SyncWithAD_Lookup to fail when creating a new team project?

AskBurton — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 01:58:00 GMT

A: A user object in Active Directory can be referenced using a number of possible names, such as the user principal name (UPN) or user logon name. For this release, the pre-Windows 2000 user logon name (also known as the security account manager name or sAMAccountName) must be the same as the mailNickName.

Suppose the logon name portion of a user logon name is "someone", the current domain is “microsoft” and the root domain is “com”. The UPN for this user is someone@microsoft.com. If the pre-Windows 2000 user logon name for this user is not “someone” (as in “DOMAIN\someone”), team project creation will fail.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Team System December CTP; Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: Why does the "Scc.SccTask" fail due to this exception: "The added or subtracted value results in an unrepresentable DateTime."

AskBurton — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 19:43:00 GMT

A: This is a known issue in this release. As a workaround, you can set both the client and application tier computers to use the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) time zone.

To change the time zone

In Control Panel, open Date and Time.
Click the Time Zone tab.
Select (GMT): Greenwich Mean Time and then click OK.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Team System December CTP

Q: What's new with merging and branching? Why is it better? Can you associate criteria with a merge?

AskBurton — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:19:00 GMT

A: Branches are managed holistically so that any type of change within the branch (i.e., files added, deleted, renamed, or edited) will be merged when you merge your changes. We manage changes that are checked in together as a “changeset”, which makes it possible for the system to identify the set of files that need to be merged for a given change – you don’t have to know that yourself. We maintain a history of everything that has been merged so that we can give users information about whether a change exists in a given branch. We can compute for users a list of changes that have not been merged and are candidates for a future merge operation. We allow users to "cherry-pick" specific changes so that you can pick out a bug fix and merge it without also pulling over other changes that were made to the same files in earlier revisions.

Applicability: Prerelease

Q: Will there be an easy way to write your own utility to migrate source code to Team Foundation version control?

AskBurton — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:19:00 GMT

A: The object model is easy to use and has all of the capabilities you need for building such a tool.

Applicability: Prerelease

Q: Can a developer have their work items when they are disconnected (i.e., some form of caching?)

AskBurton — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:18:00 GMT

A: You can export a list of work items from Team Foundation into Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project. You can edit this list while disconnected from the server and then publish the edited list back to Team Foundation when you reconnect. There is no similar facility inside the Visual Studio IDE itself.

Applicability: Prerelease

Q: Does Team Foundation support automated workflow for work items?

AskBurton — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:18:00 GMT

A: The work item type templates define the behavior of each of the types in your work item database. Each template carries rules that must be followed when a work item is moved from one state to another. You could design rules that had the effect of automatically assigning work items to other team members when their state is changed. We won’t include such rules in the “out of the box” definitions.

Applicability: Prerelease

Q: How do you know which methodology template was chosen once the portfolio project is created?

AskBurton — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:18:00 GMT

A: Each methodology template loads its own set of process guidance files. These HTML files can be used to navigate the entire methodology.

Applicability: Prerelease

Q: During Team Foundation Server Setup I get the following error: 26403. What's wrong?

AskBurton — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 20:52:00 GMT

A: See the following Community Solutions Content:

COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS CONTENT DISCLAIMER

MICROSOFT CORPORATION AND/OR ITS RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, OR ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION AND RELATED GRAPHICS CONTAINED HEREIN. ALL SUCH INFORMATION AND RELATED GRAPHICS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. MICROSOFT AND/OR ITS RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS WITH REGARD TO THIS INFORMATION AND RELATED GRAPHICS, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WORKMANLIKE EFFORT, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. YOU SPECIFICALLY AGREE THAT IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE INFORMATION AND RELATED GRAPHICS CONTAINED HEREIN, WHETHER BASED ON CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF MICROSOFT OR ANY OF ITS SUPPLIERS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGES.

Author: Prashant Lad, Madhusudhanan Padmanabhan MVP

Symptoms

While installing Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server you get an error that says, “The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 26403.”

Cause

The error comes up while adding the TFSIdentity user to IIS_WPG group on the application as the machine is unable to contact the domain controller to get the user.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, you need to add an entry in the hosts file pointing the IP address of the domain controller against the domain address.

To add an entry in the hosts file

In the Run dialog, type “notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts”, this will open the hosts file in notepad.
At the end of the file add an entry like “192.168.0.1 domainname”
Save & close the file.
Restart the machine

Note

Before you run the installer again, make sure to do the following:

Delete all the files in %TEMP% folder on the application server.
Delete the databases created by the installer on the database server. The rollback process doesn’t delete the created databases.
Make sure that TFSIdentity user is created on the domain controller and not on the application server.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: Why does the RunFxCop task fail when I run MSBuild from the command line?

AskBurton — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 01:31:00 GMT

A: When you build from the command line, the build report may contain an error for the RunFxCop task that says, "The system cannot find the path specified." This is a known problem that is fixed in later releases. It occurs because the environment variable, FxCopDir, was not defined in this release. As a workaround, you can do one of the following:

Add the Environment Variable:

In Control Panel, open System. The System Properties dialog box appears.
Click the Advanced tab, and then click Environment Variables. The Environment Variables dialog box appears.
Under System variables, click New. The New System Variable dialog box appears.
In the Variable name box, type FxCopDir.
In the Variable value box, type (path), and then click OK.

Or, use MSBuild's /p command-line switch to provide the full path for FxCop:

msbuild /p:FxCopDir="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Enterprise Developer Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop"

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: Where can I find the command-line Performance Tools?

AskBurton — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 01:26:00 GMT

A: By default, they are installed here:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Enterprise Developer Tools\Performance Tools

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: How can I determine if my Team Foundation failure is due to a domain naming problem?

AskBurton — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:44:00 GMT

A: As mentioned in this post, having a NETBIOS domain name that is not the same as the domain component (DC) of the distinguished name can cause Group Security Services to fail due to a disjoint namespace. To determine if this is causing your Team Foundation install to fail, do the following on the application tier computer:

1. At the Command Prompt, type SET USERDOMAIN and press ENTER. This will return the NETBIOS name of your domain.

2. Install the Windows Support Tools (suptools.msi) found in the \support\tools folder of the Windows Server 2003 installation CD.

3. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Windows Support Tools, and then click Command Prompt.

4. At the Command Prompt, type ADSIEDIT.MSC and press ENTER.

5. On the Action menu, click Connect To. The Connection Settings dialog box appears.

6. In the Select a well known Naming Context list, click RootDSE, and then click OK.

Note If RootDSE is not listed, there may be a problem with your Active Directory installation.

7. Expand the RootDSE connection node.

8. Right-click the RootDSE folder and then click Properties. The RootDSE Properties dialog box appears.

9. Compare the value of defaultNamingContext with the NETBIOS domain name you obtained in step 1. If the first DC item (e.g., NewYork in "DC=NewYork,DC=corp,DC=fabrikam,DC=com") in the defaultNamingContext value is not the same as the NETBIOS domain name, this will cause Group Security Services to fail.

For more information, see Domain Controller's Domain Name System Suffix Does Not Match Domain Name.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Q: Can I use Team Foundation if the NETBIOS name for my domain doesn't match the distinguished name?

AskBurton — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:53:00 GMT

A: No. In this release, Group Security Services (GSS) resolves identities by taking the distinguished name (DN), finding the deepest domain component (DC), which it assumes is the domain name (e.g., DC=NewYorkCity). It then caches the identity as domain\username (e.g., NewYorkCity\DonaldT). This domain\username is resolvable. If the NETBIOS name for your domain is different than the deepest DC (e.g., NYC instead of NewYorkCity), you will provide GSS with a domain\username it cannot resolve (e.g., NYC\DonaldT). This condition is referred to as a disjoint namespace. Under this circumstance, gssutil.exe /g will fail.

For more information, see Domain Controller's Domain Name System Suffix Does Not Match Domain Name.

Applicability: Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System