Ed Hintz (MSFT) : Visual Studio

Team Foundation Power Tools Released!

edhintz — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:38:24 GMT

Here in Visual Studio Team Foundation, we take our power toys seriously. So seriously, we've changed the name from power toys to power tools to reflect that these are no mere play toy apps, but useful tools to get real work done (or Git-R-Done for Larry the Cable Guy fans). This release is a our biggest release yet and is jam packed with new tools to help you get the most out of Team Foundation. So make more room in your tool belt because look what is included:

Process Template Editor - Now you can visually edit your team project process template in one place instead of editing multiple XML files. Visually edit work item types (bug forms) and see what it is going to look like w/o uploading to the server and rerunning the Team Project wizard. Project managers everywhere can rejoice!

Check-in Policies - We've heard the feedback that we need more check-in policies. We include four check-in policies in this power tools release.

Custom Path Policy - No longer does a policy need to apply to the entire Team Project. Now you can pick the paths and patterns of files that you want to use for any other policy
Forbidden Patterns Policy - prevent users from checking in files with a particular pattern (e.g. *.dll)
Changeset comments - require user to type in comments before checking in
Work Item Query Policy - Restrict checkins to ones that fix bugs in a specified work item query

Tree Clean - Have you ever wanted to see what files in a given directory are not in version control? Have you wanted to remove these files so you can clean up your directory of compiler generated stuff? The treeclean command is for you.

Update Workspace's Computer Name - Suppose you have hundred's of thousand files in version control but some of the developers have a network connection that is like sucking through one of those skinny coffee stir straw. No one wants to do that initial get of all those files. What do you do? Ah, we have the answer for that - on a machine with a fast connection (e.g. close to the server), create a workspace called foo and do the initial get. Burn a CD and send to the poor developer with the slow network connection. After the developer copies the files on his disk to the same drive/path locations, the developer can run tfpt workspace /updatecomputername foo and just like that - the developer is ready to go. We use to call the process of copying files to a disk and handing to someone else sneaker net. Sneaker net is alive and kicking!

Build Test Tool Task - Now you can run unit tests after a successful team build by simply specifying the dlls or file name pattern in tfsbuild.proj. No need to use the vsmdi file.

The best part of working on power tools is you get to hear these two words more often, "Ship It!"

Enjoy and leave feedback and questions on this blog or the forum.

Visual Studio Team System Chat - this Wednesday Feb 7th

edhintz — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:59:50 GMT

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).

Join the chat on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

Add to Calendar

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Team Foundation Server Channel 9 Series Begins

edhintz — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 15:36:55 GMT

The first in a series of Channel 9 videos covering various topics of Team Foundation Server is available here. In this first video, Doug Neumann whiteboards branching and merging strategies.

New Release of Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider

edhintz — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:17:20 GMT

You can get it here.

Overview

The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration.
This version (1.2) includes:

Enable handling branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003.
Fixed issues to enable provider to support Toad for SQL Server 2.0.
Enhanced the "Choose Folder in Team Foundation Server" dialog.
Fixed bug which prevented Properties Dialog from displaying local path.
Work Items Query list in the Checkin Dialog is loaded and saved on the disk.
"Get" operation performance improvements.
Defect fixes

This is our third release this year of the TFS MSSCCI provider. Keep the feedback coming via the forum or by e-mail.

Channel 9 Interviewing Team Foundation Server Team

edhintz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:54:03 GMT

Brian Keller will be interviewing members of the Team Foundation Server Team on December 14th and 15th (Wednesday and Thursday this week) for Channel 9. Submit questions for the interview here before December 13th. This is your chance to find out something about Team Foundation Server, but were afraid to ask (you can have Brian ask for you ;-).

Brian Keller will be interviewing me about Team Foundation Powertools, Brian Harry about the Team Foundation Server road map, and several more great topics that you can see here. You can watch the existing Visual Studio Team System channel 9 videos here.

Visual Studio Team System Public MSDN Chat

edhintz — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 03:40:00 GMT

Come and join members from the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Architect, Developer and Tester editions and Team Foundation Server. There will be experts on hand to answer your questions. I hope to see you there!

Join the chat on Wednesday September 6th, 2006 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific time.

To add this to your calendar, click here.

To see your local time of when this chat is, click here.

New Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider Available Now!

edhintz — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:28:00 GMT

I am happy to report we have released an updated TFS MSSCCI provider here. We have been able to address a number of requests (keep them coming) in this release including the following:

PowerBuilder support
Enterprise Architect support
Improved Open from SCC experience
Work items can now be modified in the checkinwindow
Get latest on checkout support
Check-in lock is treated as exclusive
Setup works on x64

This is an unsupported "powertoy" like tool. There have been some discussions about the possibility of supporting it, but nothing yet. Keep reporting issues and comments to the forum or by e-mail.

Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider Released!

edhintz — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:35:00 GMT

The Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider (TFS MSSCCI) available now!. You can download it here (If you tried to get this on 4/7/2006 and it errored out, please try again). TFS MSSCCI allows applications and development environments that serve as MSSCCI hosts to access Team Foundation Server Source Control.

Supported environments:

Visual Studio .NET 2003
Visual C++ 6 SP6
Visual Visual Basic 6 SP6
Visual FoxPro 9 SP1
Microsoft Access 2003 SP2
SQL Server Management Studio 2005

Other environments that support MSSCCI should work as well, but were not tested.

The TFS MSSCCI provider is unsupported and provided "as is". However, you can ask questions on our forum or by mail and we will do our best to help. We welcome and look forward to your feedback.

Special thanks to Ben Ryan, Michal Malecki, Pei Gu, Ted Chambers and Mario Rodriguez for making this release possible.