Here's the announcement.  Please download the TFS Virtual PC image and let us know what you think.  Except for build scheduling, this CTP contains all of the new Team Build features, including continuous integration.

We are excited to announce that the Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” March 2007 CTP is now available publicly to all customers! This CTP is being released as both a Virtual PC (VPC) image and Installable Bits for both VSTS and TFS.

If you wish to use the Virtual PC image you will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. You can use Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual PC 2007 (2007 required to run the VPC on Windows Vista).  If you wish to use the self extracting install, we advise that you do not install this on a production machine. If you have Vista as the OS on your box, please only download the VPC.  In either case, depending on your hardware the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress. 

Use the following links for step-by-step instructions on installing and using the VPC images or installable bits, links to the ReadMe and provide feedback.

The download page says that the password to the VPC image is P2ssw0rd (user is Administrator).  However, I'm betting it may be P@ssw0rd instead (that was the case on an internal VPC pre-release image that I tried).

Be sure to read all of the instructions for the CTP.  In particular, make sure you download the base VPC image (otherwise, the download won't be of any value to you).

Here's what's new for TFS in this particular CTP.  The download pages have the details for what's new in all of VS and VSTS (it's quite a lot).

  • Team Build (more detail)
    • Support multi-threaded builds with the new MSBuild.
    • Continuous Integration – There are many components to this, including build queuing and queue management, drop management (so that users can set policies for when builds should be automatically deleted), and build triggers that allows configuration of exactly how when CI builds should be triggered, for example – every checkin, rolling build (completion of one build starts the next), etc.
    • Improved ability to specify what source, versions of source, etc to include in a build.
    • Improved ability to manage multiple build machines.
    • Simplified ability to specify what tests get run as part of a build
  • Version Control support
    • Destroy- The version control destroy operation provides administrators with the ability to remove files and folders from the version control system. The destroyed files and folders cannot be recovered once they are destroyed. Destroy allows administrators to achieve SQL server disk space usage goals without constantly needing to add more disks to the data tier machine. Destroy also facilitates removing versioned file contents that must be permanently removed from the system for any other reason.
    • Annotate - Annotate is a feature that allows developers to inspect a source code file and see at line-by-line level of detail who last changed each section of code. It brings together changeset data with difference technology to enable developers to quickly learn change history inside a source file.
    • Folder Diff - Team Foundation Server now supports compare operations on folders, whereby the contents of the folder are recursively compared to identify files that differ. Folder diff can compare local folders to local folders, local folders to server folders, and server folders to server folders. It’s a great way of identifying differences between branches, files that you’ve changed locally, and files that have changed between two points in time.
    • Get Latest on Checkout - As an optional setting on a team project or on an individual basis, you can have Team Foundation Server always download the latest version of a file when you check it out. This helps ensure that you don’t have to merge your changes with somebody else’s when you check the file back in.
  • Performance and Scale
    • This release includes numerous improvements in performance and scalability of Team Foundation Server.

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