bharry's WebLog

More Beta 2 Localized builds available publicly

bharry — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:50:00 GMT

German

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 - ISO
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dc333ac8-596d-41e3-ba6c-84264e761b81&displaylang=de

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 – Web Bootstrapper

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92c65d2d-0a6b-4507-a4dc-767f4cc6e823&displaylang=de

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 - ISO
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a80dfb5d-51c6-4778-8656-a9ff29d3a132&displaylang=de

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 – Web Bootstrapper
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=79d01825-f64b-433c-8873-17297fa5cc16&displaylang=de
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 – ISO
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6c70fd8f-615e-4203-a028-acb2c2b8b88f&displaylang=de

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ded875c8-fe5e-4cc9-b973-2171b61fe982&displaylang=de

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Web Bootstrapper
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9F5E8774-C8DC-4FF6-8285-03A4C387C0DB&displaylang=de

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 LangPack – DEU
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=178a0003-f791-4ff3-b6f6-633f0ad1740d&displaylang=de
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=68a7173d-7ee5-4213-a06f-f2e943ec9249&displaylang=de

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 Web Bootstrapper
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=206505ec-aa66-4d4e-be26-2b69b7d697d0&displaylang=de

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 LangPack – DEU

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f04b5749-218f-4c8e-8673-1436037e0540&displaylang=de

Arabic

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 إصدار بيتا 2 لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ded875c8-fe5e-4cc9-b973-2171b61fe982&displaylang=ar

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Web برنامج تمهيد التشغيل لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9F5E8774-C8DC-4FF6-8285-03A4C387C0DB&displaylang=ar

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 حزمة اللغة للإصدار بيتا 2 لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=178a0003-f791-4ff3-b6f6-633f0ad1740d&displaylang=ar

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile إصدار بيتا 2 لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=68a7173d-7ee5-4213-a06f-f2e943ec9249&displaylang=ar

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 Web برنامج تمهيد التشغيل لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=206505ec-aa66-4d4e-be26-2b69b7d697d0&displaylang=ar

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile حزمة اللغة للإصدار بيتا 2 لـ
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f04b5749-218f-4c8e-8673-1436037e0540&displaylang=ar

Brian

VS Beta 2 is now available to MSDN subscribers in German

bharry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:23:00 GMT

In addition .NET 4.0 Beta 2 is available in Arabic.

Here's the SKU list:

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 2 (x86 and x64) - DVD (German)

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 (x86) - DVD (German)

Visual Studio 2010 Professional (x86) - DVD (German)

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 Web Installer (x86) - (German)

Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 Web Installer (x86) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Full Language Pack Beta 2 (x86) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Full Language Pack Beta 2 (x86 and x64) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Full Language Pack Beta 2 (x86 and ia64) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Language Pack Beta 2 (x86) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Language Pack Beta 2 (x86 and x64) - (German)

.NET Framework 4 Full Language Pack Beta 2 (x86) - (Arabic)

.NET Framework 4 Full Language Pack Beta 2 (x86 and x64) - (Arabic)

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Language Pack Beta 2 (x86) - (Arabic)

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Language Pack Beta 2 (x86 and x64) - (Arabic)

Brian

Intellectual Honesty

bharry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:58:00 GMT

I'm going to jump out of character here and rant about something that really got under my skin today. Let me start by saying I'm not into politics all that much - I see both sides of too many issues to have overwhelmingly strong opinions. Further, I consider myself pretty moderate sometimes agreeing with Democrats and sometimes with Republicans.

Every day at the end of the radio news on the local radio station there is a political commentary. As I was driving home tonight, I heard the latest installment and was offended to my core - not because I agreed or disagreed with the position but because the argument was offensive.

The commentator was taking the position that North Carolina corporate taxes are not too high. He chose to make his argument by "disproving" the opposite argument. He said that supporters of lower NC corporate taxes claim that the high taxes in NC drive companies away - particularly to South Carolina where taxes are lower. His "proof" of this claim was a company who sometime, presumably not too long ago, announced expansion in the state of North Carolina and that one of the alernatives they had investigated was South Carolina. The fact that this company chose to expand in NC is proof that NC corporate taxes are not too high.

Does this argument prove that? Not even close! It's hardly even a relevant argument at all. This company could have made the choice for any number of reasons - proximity to suppliers, proximity to existing facilities, labor availability, or anything else. They may have felt that the taxes were a significant negative factor but that other factors overwhelmed them.

The comentator had no information on why the decision was made. Now you may argue (and rightfully so) that it doesn't really matter why they made the decision, the decision shows that taxes were not prohibitive. However, it is only one data point. If you want to support such an argument, it could only reasonably be done by looking at a significant number of such decisions and determining how taxes affected them (for example by polling the companies to understand their motivations).

I call this post intellectual honesty because this is how I define it. When you are intellectually honest, you don't claim that an argument means more than it really does. You acknowledge the potential weaknesses in your own argument. You're clear about what your motivations/agendas are. You clearly distinguish fact, supposition and opinion.

I am a VERY big believer in intellectual honesty. Politics has gotten to the point today where I can't find anyone on either side who is intellectually honest. I have to say that it's the most discouraging thing to me. I don't mind a good argument. I'm fine with not being able to overcome a difference of opinion with someone. But if you can't rely on someone to argue a case honestly, the discussion is pointless.

I think if I could change one thing in this world, this might be it :)

Brian

Beta 2 Survey Results

bharry — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:01:26 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I asked you all for feedback on Beta 2 and pointed you at a survey. I think, all of you that contacted me directly have been contacted by someone to investigate the issues you reported. If not, let me know and I’ll get it fixed. We’ve spent the last week or so assessing the survey results.

One thing that has become clear is that you all really like the release/feature set. There has been a ton of very positive feedback about the new testing features, architecture tools, Intellitrace, Sharepoint tooling, etc. We’re seeing more people choose to go live on this Beta 2 release than we’ve ever seen before – people just can’t wait to take advantage of the great new features.

At the same time, we heard that while the performance has improved dramatically since Beta 1, 30% of you are either very dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied with VS 2010 Beta 2 performance. We’ve received a lot of details on what people are unhappy with and most of them revolve around a few areas – typing/intellisense, project load, debugger, some C++ project issues, etc.

30% unhappy customers is clearly extremely unacceptable. We have redoubled our effort on performance and are investigating every customer report. We are looking at VM usage, working set and revisiting our performance tests to make them more reflective of “real-world” customer scenarios. We’ve made some really big improvements, for example, I saw a 40% Intellisense throughput improvement recently and yesterday we found more than 100MB we could cut out of TFS Basic memory usage. We’re continuing to look hard and finding significant improvements.

We have changed some end game plans to make some builds available to customers who have reported issues so that we can validate that we have fixed them. We have also decided to create an RC release that we will make available to people who would like to help validate that the performance issues have been addressed.

I want to thank you all for taking the survey and sharing your opinion. I also want to make sure you know that we’ve heard your feedback and are working aggressively to address it. We look forward to any additional feedback you have – either on the Beta 2 build or on one of the subsequent builds we will make available. Stay tuned for information on further build availability.

Thanks,

Brian

TFS 2010 Power Tools Coming Soon

bharry — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:02 GMT

I think for 6 months or more I’ve been promising that we’d release updated Power Tools to support TFS 2010 “soon”. Well, I apologize that it hasn’t worked out that way. It seems like some higher priority activity always rears its head when we think we are ready to get started on it. But the good news is you won’t have to wait much longer, honestly. :) We’ve been working on them and testing them for the last couple of months and we are now doing final validation of the what we think is the last build. It should be available within a week.

With the new release being so close, I wanted to give you a brief preview of what to expect. The way to think about this release is that we worked to get all of the existing Power Tools that we thought were critical to support Beta 2 adoption working against TFS/VS 2010 and updated to support new 2010 features. You will see that a few of the Power Tools are still not working in this build. We will release another Power Tool update around launch where all of the Power Tools will be working.

This release of the Power Tools will only run in a VS 2010 IDE. Most of the features will work against both a TFS 2010 and earlier servers. However a few features will only work against a 2010 server. More on this below when I talk about the individual features. The 2005/2008 Power Tools can still be used with the 2005/2008 VS installs while using a TFS 2010 server. So pick the version of the Power Tools that matches your client environment.

The first step to getting the Power Tools ready for 2010 was removing all of the features that are now built into the 2010 product (or in some way no longer relevant). If you still want to use some of these features against a TFS 2005/2008 server, you will need to use the TFS 2005/TFS2008 Power Tools. For example, the Rollback command has been added to TFS 2010 and removed from the Power Tools. However, the product feature requires new server side support in TFS 2010. If you want to continue to use Rollback against a TFS 2005/2008 server, you will need to use the TFS 2005/2008 Power Tools.

The list of things we’ve moved into the product includes:

Quick Label – Replaced by the new Team Explorer label dialog.
Rollback command – Replaced by the new TFS 2010 command line Rollback feature.
History command – tfpt history /followbranches replaced by new merge tracking features in both the command line and GUI.
Find Changeset menu – Replaced by built in “Find Changesets…” in 2010
Support for Client Certificates – Built in to TFS 2010
Build Notifications – An improved version is now included in Team Explorer 2010
TFSUsers – Not necessary because TFS 2010 now automatically reacts to Active Directory user name changes.
DestroyWI Command – Incorporated into witadmin.exe
DestroyWITD Command – Incorporated into witadmin.exe
TweakUI Command – Replaced by tf certificates and other 2010 features.
Destroygl – Incorporated into witadmin.exe
changedocUrl – Replaced by Configure menu in Office apps

I’m glad we were able to incorporate so much of the Power Tools capability into the shipping product. Of course, I wish we could have done even more but there’s always next time :)

The next step was getting the rest of the existing features working against VS/TFS 2010. Here’s the list of features supported in the upcoming Power Tools release and the changes we’ve made:

Process Template Editor – Our biggest investment has been in the Process Template Editor. Not only did it require a bunch of new features to support all of the new TFS 2010 work item tracking features but we also invested quite a lot in clean up and bug fixing – we’ve received quite a few bug reports. In all, we fixed 80 bugs in the Process Template Editor. The new Process Template Editor will not edit process templates associated with older TFS versions. If you need to edit a Process Template for TFS 2005 or TFS 2008, use the TFS 2005 or TFS 2008 Power Tools. The new features include.

Support for out-of-the-box 2010 versions of MSF for Agile and MSF for CMMI process templates
Creation and editing of query folders
Creation and editing of custom link types
Support for the new work item form controls: Label, enhanced links control, web page and link labels.
Creation and editing of work item type categories.

Command Line Interface (tfpt) – No enhancements but other than the removed list above, everything should work.
Visual Studio Integration – There’s a bunch of miscellaneous IDE features that have been updated to work with VS/TFS 2010 but without feature enhancements. The most prominent are:

Work Item templates
Alerts Editor
Find in Source Control
…

Check in Policy Pack – Updated to work with VS 2010 while still allowing policies to be shared with older clients.
Best Practice Analyzer – Because the architecture of TFS has changed so substantially in this release (AT scale out, DT scale out, Team Project Collections, new “Job Service”, Lab Management, etc we need to completely overhaul the BPA tool. You can think of this release as the first step. The BPA tool now runs against a TFS 2010 server (however you’ll need to use the BPA tool from previous Power Tool releases against previous TFS versions because the new BPA tool won’t run against a TFS 2005 or TFS 2008 server). It now recognized all of the components of a TFS 2010 farm but has very few rules to validate it yet. Expect a big increment of new work on the BPA tool in the next Power Tools update.
Windows Shell Extension – Updated to work with TFS 2010 but no new features.
PowerShell Cmdlets – Updated to work with TFS 2010 but no new features.
MSSCCI Provider – Updated to work with TFS 2010 but no new features.

Truthfully, many of the Power Tools required no updates because we maintained pretty good compatibility between 2008 and 2010.

So that leads me to what does *not* yet work in this 2010 Power Tools update. Ironically, the two Power Tools that I wrote :( I’ve started on a new version of TFSServerManager but haven’t completed it yet. For the mean time, I’m afraid you’ll have to live without the benefit of these tools. We’ll have them in shape in a few months and include them in the next update.

Team Members
TFS Server Manager

Thanks and let me know if you have any questions. I’ll blog an update with the download URL as soon as it is available.

Brian

Early look at the TMap process template

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:26:00 GMT

I've had the pleasure of working with some of the folks at Sogeti on a new process template they are building for TFS 2010 that manifests their TMap testing process on top of TFS and the new VS 2010 testing features. Clemens just sent me a pointer to his blog post about the first publicly available drop of their work. If testing process is something that interests you, check it out.

http://www.clemensreijnen.nl/post/2009/11/11/First-drop-of-TMap-for-VS2010-available-on-Codeplex.aspx

Brian

TFS Integration Platform rises like a Phoenix

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:08:00 GMT

From the ashes of the TFS Migration and Synchronization toolkit rises the new and improved TFS Integration Platform. This platform can be used to integrate other data stores with TFS. We get a lot of requests for integration with other version control & work item tracking system, collaboration systems (like Sharepoint), CRM systems, help desk systems, etc. The TFS Integration Platform is agreat starting point for building these solutions. Matt Mitrik has written a blog post describing the "Alpha release" that is available now. We're working hard on getting a "Beta release" out over the next few months. If it's an area that's interesting to you check it out and see how you can participate. If you are looking for a solution and don't want in on the gory details, it's not quite ready for you yet - just hold on a bit longer :)

The CodePlex project is here: http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com/

Brian

Japanese 2010 Beta 2 is now publicly available

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:07:00 GMT

.NET Framework 4 Beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ded875c8-fe5e-4cc9-b973-2171b61fe982&displaylang=ja

.NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Web Bootstrapper

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f5e8774-c8dc-4ff6-8285-03a4c387c0db&displaylang=ja

.NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Language Pack

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=178a0003-f791-4ff3-b6f6-633f0ad1740d&displaylang=ja

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=68a7173d-7ee5-4213-a06f-f2e943ec9249&displaylang=ja

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 Web Bootstrapper

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=206505ec-aa66-4d4e-be26-2b69b7d697d0&displaylang=ja

.NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 Language Pack

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f04b5749-218f-4c8e-8673-1436037e0540&displaylang=ja

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate – Web Installer

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92c65d2d-0a6b-4507-a4dc-767f4cc6e823&displaylang=ja

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate – Iso Image

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dc333ac8-596d-41e3-ba6c-84264e761b81&displaylang=ja

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server – Iso Image

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6c70fd8f-615e-4203-a028-acb2c2b8b88f&displaylang=ja

Very active blog on testing with 2010

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:42:00 GMT

With Beta 2 out there and garnering attention, the teams producing the new testing tools as part of the VS 2010 release have really begun to blog about it actively. There's a ton of great content on their blog to help you get started and address frequently asked questions. Check out the blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vstsqualitytools/

Brian

TFS Sidekicks 2.4 Released

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:15:00 GMT

If you haven't ever checked out the TFS Sidekicks from Attrice, here's a great opportunity to look at them. Attrice just released an update (version 2.4) with a bunch of new features and bug fixes.

http://www.attrice.info/blog/2009/11/12/team-foundation-sidekicks-2-4-release/

You can think of the Sidekicks as a little like our Power Tools but from Attrice rather than from Microsoft. They are some great tools and I point users at them all the time. They help fill in gaps and add cool features to TFS. Their permissions side kick tool has some great features for understanding what permission individual users are granted, for instance - a common request we get but haven't had the opportunity to ship in TFS yet.

Check it out!

Brian

Back from Europe

bharry — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:01:00 GMT

I just got back from Europe last night. I spent one week in Rome at a partners summit and almost a week in Berlin at Tech Ed. I had 4 talks in each city (wow, it was a lot of speaking :)). It was really a terrific trip. It's the first time I've had the chance to spend a lot of time face to face with customers since Beta 2 shipped.

The excitement is really encouraging. People are really psyched about the 2010 release. There's a ton of good stuff in there pretty much no matter what angle you come at it from. Of course, there are tons of questions too - particularly about the licensing changes and upgrade/compatibility. At both events, I'd say all of the new capabilities around testing were the highlight. We did a ton of demos - including of the new Lab Management features. It really felt great.

One thing that struck me on the product front is that 2010 performance still isn't quite there yet. As I said, I was doing a bunch of demos and there were some very uncomfortable demo pauses as I waited for VS to catch up with me. I can caveat it all I want - VPCs, slow hard drive, not enough memory, etc, etc, but the reality is that it's not where I want it to be. For the past month or so, we've been working very hard on virtual memory usage and working set. This trip was a good reenforcement that the investment is worthwhile. Now that I'm back, I'm going to go dig in and see how much progress we are making and make sure that when we release this it's a great experience.

On a personal note, I took my 11 year old daughter with me (first time on a business trip). I had 5 days (including the weekend) between the two events and she and I did some sightseeing in both Rome and Berlin. It was really cool and I think she really loved it. It was the first time I'd been to Rome. I've always been a fan of Roman history and Kathleen is studying Greek and Roman history in school now. It was really humbling to be walking through those ruins - thousands of years old. It really gives you perspective on human history. I'd been to Berlin before but it was almost 25 years ago (before the wall came down). It was really cool to walk along where the wall used to be and see how much has changed. The germans have really accomplished a lot in 20 years.

Brian

Microsoft has Acquired the Teamprise Client Suite

bharry — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:56:50 GMT

Today we are announcing that Microsoft has closed on the purchase of the Teamprise Client Suite from Teamprise (a division of SourceGear). I’m incredibly excited to be taking this step.

From my very first software job (producing an email client in the late 80’s) it has been clear to me that the value of collaboration software grows exponentially with the number of people who can use it. This is why when we built SourceSafe in the early 90’s we produced DOS, Win16, Win32, Mac and Unix (8 different flavors) clients. When we set out to build Team Foundation Server almost 7 years ago, it was equally clear. We began looking for a great partner who could work with us to develop a great heterogeneous development story – providing access from a wide range of platforms and tools. We soon found SourceGear (and subsequently their new Teamprise division) to be a terrific match.

We’ve worked closely with Teamprise for the past several years and have jointly been delivering a great solution. At the same time, we have been talking closely with our customers to understand their commitment to heterogeneous development as well as their difficulty in working with us and a partner together for such a central piece of their ALM picture. As a result, we began discussions with Teamprise to brainstorm ways that we could evolve our relationship to address the consistent feedback we were both getting from our joint customers. Together, we concluded that the right thing was for Microsoft to bring the Teamprise Client Suite in house and develop, deliver, support and sell it in a way that is consistent with how we manage the rest of our Visual Studio ALM offerings.

Heterogeneous development is here for the long term – different operating systems (Window, Unix, Mac, Linux, Mainframe, …), different tools (VS and Eclipse are the big obvious ones but there are plenty more) and different programming models (.NET, C++, Java, HTML/Ajax, …), etc. Modern development, for many companies, means navigating a path that draws value from each of these technologies where it makes sense. However customers really want an ALM solution that is comprehensive and helps them manage their development regardless of which technologies they choose.

This acquisition demonstrates that we are committed to helping people succeed in all of their software development endeavors. Combining the Teamprise product with the existing Visual Studio products will enable us to provide a broad offering that can cover a wide array of your ALM needs.

Let’s talk some details:

Teamprise Client Suite consists of 3 components:

Eclipse plugin - Allows developers to perform all of their source control, bug tracking, build, and reporting operations from within Eclipse and Eclipse-based IDEs, such as Rational Application Developer, JBoss, BEA Workshop, and Adobe Flex Builder. It integrates into the menu system of Eclipse as a standard Team Provider plug-in, but also provides developers with specific views and forms for interacting with the Team Foundation Server. Developers using the Teamprise Plug-in for Eclipse have the ability to take part in the entire software development process in use by their organization without leaving the comforts of their development environment.

Stand-alone Explorer - Combines all of the functionality available to Eclipse developers using the Teamprise Plug-in into a stand-alone, cross-platform GUI application for team members working outside of a development IDE. Perform source control operations, browse the Team Foundation Server repository, edit bug reports, run work item queries, monitor builds, and view project reports all from within an application that has a native look and feel on the operating system you are using.

Command line client - Provides a cross-platform, non-graphical interface to Microsoft's Team Foundation Server, for scripting and build scenarios or for developers who prefer a command-line interface. The command line interface is compatible with the current Microsoft supplied command line interface so scripts are interchangeable.

All of these components work on Windows, Mac, Linux and several flavors of Unix. In addition work is being done to explore providing these capabilities in mainframe environments to enable access to the Visual Studio ALM platform from there as well.

To help you visualize this better, here are a couple of screenshots of the Eclipse plugin. As you can see, aside from being in Eclipse, it doesn’t look substantially different from the Visual Studio Team Explorer.

With the transaction complete, we are turning our attention to creating the first “official” Microsoft version of the Teamprise Client Suite (new brand TBD). We expect to release an update this coming spring that will support a large portion of the TFS 2010 feature set while still being compatible with TFS 2005 and 2008 servers. When the Microsoft branded release is available, we will be providing free upgrades for all customers who own a Teamprise client product and an associated TFS CAL and will begin full Microsoft support for the product. Until then, Teamprise will continue to sell and support the Teamprise product. Please stay tuned for further updates as we make progress.

In addition to purchasing the technology, we’ve hired most of the development team. The most visible of which is Martin Woodward – MVP extraordinaire and beloved member of the Visual Studio ALM community. Please join me in welcoming them to the team.

I’ll just repeat that I find it hard to express how excited I am. I’ve been working on this for months and not able to say anything to anyone about it. It’s a big step forward for us and I really believe will enable our customers to get to the next level with their ALM capabilities. It’s an exciting time!

Brian

Tool to automate VM setups for Lab

bharry — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:36:00 GMT

One of the cool new capabilities in the 2010 wave of products is Lab Management. It allows you to easily manage a pool of virtual machines and automate deployment and testing of your applications. Lab Management allows you do define "Environments" - collections of virtual machine templates that define your application deployment architecture. For example, a 3 tier environment would have a client, a mid tier and a data tier VM template. Once you have an environment, you can easily and repeatabily deploy builds of your software onto it and run automate or manual tests.

However, getting a proper environment configured can be a fair amount of work. Preparing all the VMs takes a lot of steps and a lot of time. Accounts need to be set up for talking to TFS. Lab, deployment and test agent software needs to be installed. A bunch of Windows settings need to be adjusted (screen saver turned off, IE popups (like auto complete, etc) need to be disabled, and more). It can take many hours to get it all done and it's easy to miss a step.

To help with this, we are working on a tool that will automatically prepare your VM templates for you. The first pre-release of the tool is now available on CodePlex here: http://vslabmgmt.codeplex.com/. You'll find the documentation for it on the CodePlex site.

We expect to have it finished and ready for broad use by the time the 2010 products are released.

I think you'll find this tool to be a really big timesaver for you. Let us know if you have any feedback.

Brian

The Japanese version of Visual Studio Beta 2 is now available to MSDN subscribers

bharry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:12:00 GMT

The products available include:

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Ultimate Beta2 – Iso Image
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Ultimate Beta2 – Web Installer
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta2 – Iso Image
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Full LanguagePack (x86, x86_x64, x86_ia64)
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Client Profile LanguagePack (x86, x86_x64, x86_ia64)

We also have Japanese translated documentation available:

VS Beta2 Japanese Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/52f3sw5c(VS.100).aspx
.NET Framework 4 Beta2 Documentation:http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/w0x726c2(VS.100,classic).aspx

Please provide feedback on our Connect site at: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudioJapan/

The product downloads will be available for non-MSDN subscribers on November 11th. I’ll blog the download links when I have them.

Thanks,

Brian

Sharepoint log files growing out of control

bharry — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:45:00 GMT

As part of the Beta 2 evaluation process, I've seen a couple of reports of customers having problems with Sharepoint log files growing out of control - gigabytes in just a few minutes. Needless to say, it fills up disks and creates all kinds of havoc. While I don't know the root cause, we have found a bunch of useful information about it and a solution to make it stop. I've included that info here in hopes of making it more readily available.

All the cases I've seen so far fill the log file with messages starting with "The previous instance of the timer job "

Here's a forum thread on the issue:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/e6db3ae1-48c1-4d0d-9461-bd249f7c2453

And here's a blog post on how to fix it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/josrod/archive/2007/12/12/clear-the-sharepoint-configuration-cache-for-timer-job-and-psconfig-errors.aspx

Hope this is helpful,

Brian