granth's blog : Team Build

Permissions required for Team Build Retention Policy in TFS2008

grantholliday — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:34:23 GMT

I got a question from one of our internal email lists today:

Our TFS build service is owned by a generic build account – domain\tfsbuild. We have retention policy set up to retain a fixed set of builds. The old builds were deleted when viewed via Team Explorer. However, on the drop server, the builds are not deleted. Apparently there’s an access issue when TFS attempted to delete the old builds.

Someone told me that the TFS service account will need admin rights. Is this true?

Aaron from the Team Build team did a good job of explaining what was happening:

When TFS deletes build drops it first tries to have the build agent do the deletion, and then falls back to the AT. Ideally, then, both the build service account and the AT service account would have full control to the root of the drop location. This does not mean that these accounts need to be administrators on the box, however – that should not be a requirement.

There should be errors in the event log on the AT whenever TFS tries to fully delete a drop – these should include the error that caused the deletion to fail. You might have to get your friendly TFS administrator to have a look on the server and see if they find any such errors for the builds whose drops didn’t get deleted.

Another is that the drop locations were in use when they got deleted – this is fairly common, typically resulting in everything on the drop but the handful of files that were in use getting deleted, along with whatever folder structure got preserved as a result. You might have a look at your undeleted drops to see if everything is there, or just a few files.

TFS Adoption at Microsoft – May 2009

grantholliday — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:26:58 GMT

As promised last week in my Dogfooding TFS show on the RadioTFS podcast, here is the latest on TFS within Microsoft that myself and Brian have posted about in the past.

May had the all-time peak in the total number of unique active users with 15,613. In addition, the total number of source code files stored surpassed 60 million. The total number of projects continues to increase and will end the fiscal year over 3,500, growing by over 1,300 in the last year. MSIT RXD continues to lead the way using a TFS2010 pre-beta1 build with an average of 100 active users per week.

Summary of growth indicators for the month:

May 2009	Growth	Totals
Unique Active Users	+29	15,613
Total Active Users	+24	17,680
Projects	+98	3,434
Work Items	+170,436	3,934,238
Source Code Files	+1,760,516	60,253,062

We call the internal TFS at Microsoft the “TFS Service Offering”. All the servers are setup and maintained by our partners in Microsoft IT.

Active Users - Service Offering:

Projects & Unique Active Users Across Service Offering:

The number of team projects was up by 98 this month. Added to the chart this month are labels for the releases since January 2007 to give some perspective on growth and when versions were released.

Team Builds:

Combined data from across the Service Offering.

RadioTFS Podcast on Dogfooding TFS

grantholliday — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:22:22 GMT

Last week I sat down (virtually) with two of our Team System MVP’s - Martin Woodward and Paul Hacker. We had a good chat about TFS at Microsoft which you can listen to on show #22 of the RadioTFS podcast.

Play now: Radio TFS #22: Dogfooding TFS with Grant Holliday (35minutes, 16MB MP3)
Subscribe now: Radio TFS – A show about all things related to VSTS and TFS

In the show we talked about a range of topics. Here are some links:

Microsoft Process Template (MPT) on Codeplex
Book - The Build Master: Microsoft's Software Configuration Management Best Practices
Slot Mode vs Item Mode (aka Schema Change)
TFS Performace reports pack
Report VS2010 Issue on Connect

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 1 Installation Problems

grantholliday — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:38:41 GMT

First of all, see my last post Visual Studio Team System 2010 Beta 1 Download Links for all the download links and installation docs. Also check out Brian Keller’s post on Using a download manager to quickly download Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1.

We greatly value your feedback. Please fill in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 Survey and visit the Microsoft Connect Beta 1 Feedback page to submit a bug or a suggestion.

Also, the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta1 Forums are being tracked by the product team so that you can get help with your installation issues and share feedback.

If you don’t like forums, or you’d like to discuss TFS2010 with other people over email, you can also join the OzTFS.com mailing list for the latest buss.

The Readme File

In this post, I want to bring your attention to the Team Foundation Server Beta 1 Readme and the common gotchas I’ve seen people hit when installing TFS2010 Beta1.

These are the issues I’ve hit myself (because I didn’t read the readme…)

TF31001 "The ServicePointManager does not support proxies with the https scheme."

If you are trying to connect to a TFS server that is configured using HTTPS, then you might run into this issue.

See Aaron Block’s blog post for all the details.

On all machines:

reg add hklm\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\RequestSettings /v BypassProxyOnLocal /t REG_SZ /d False

reg add hklm\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TeamFoundationServer\10.0\RequestSettings /v BypassProxyOnLocal /t REG_SZ /d False

Additionally on a 64-bit machine:

reg add hklm\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\TeamFoundationServer\10.0\RequestSettings /v BypassProxyOnLocal /t REG_SZ /d False

reg add hklm\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\RequestSettings /v BypassProxyOnLocal /t REG_SZ /d False

Initial Configuration of Team Foundation Server Should be Run From MSI Program or by Command Line

Initial Team Foundation Server configuration fails on Windows SharePoint configuration if you access the Team Foundation Configuration Tool by clicking the link in the Team Foundation Administration Console instead of by launching Team Foundation Configuration Tool at the end of the installation phase.

To resolve this issue:

If you want to setup Windows SharePoint Server during Team Foundation Server configuration, you must launch the Team Foundation Server Configuration Tool by using one of the two following methods:

Launch the Team Foundation Configuration Tool by selecting the check box at the end of the Team Foundation Server installation

If you exited Team Foundation Server MSI program (setup.exe) without launching Team Foundation Configuration Tool, do not start the Administration Console from the Start menu item shortcut. Instead use following command line:

%programfiles%\Microsoft team foundation server 10.0\tools\tfsmgmt.exe configure

After Team Foundation Server has installed and configured Windows SharePoint, you can configure Team Foundation Server by using the Start menu to launch Team Foundation Server Administration Console.

If you don’t do this, then your SharePoint configuration will be broken and you’ll get a 404 on the SharePoint Administration site.

Team Foundation Server Name May Not Be Over 14 Characters

The name of the server running Team Foundation Server may not be over 14 characters.

To resolve this issue:

Use a valid NETBIOS name of 14 Characters or less for Team Foundation Server. Configuration fails if the name of the server running Team Foundation Server uses more than 14 characters.

TF50363: The following display name is not valid

This is due to a known bug in our upgrade scripts where in the Version Control db (TfsVersionControl) tbl_Identity table there exists one or more rows where the DisplayName field contains data that is not in the expected format of domain\username.

If you hit this error, the workaround is to update the row and prefix the existing value with a dummy domain name like 'domain\'.

See Bryan Krieger’s blog post TFS 2010 Beta1 - Upgrade may fail with TF50363: The following display name is not valid.

Windows Server 2008 R2 RC & SQL Express

Although Windows Server 2008 R2 RC is not officially supported by this build, it is possible to get TFS running using a couple of workarounds. See Installing TFS 2010 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC from the TFS Developer Support team.

I’ve also heard talking that that install will work OK with an odd error message, but SQL Express won’t run. Not sure on the details of this one. YMMV. It might need SQL Server 2008 SP1.

Visual Studio 2008 Compatibility with a Team Foundation Server 2010 server

We are planning a Forward Compat GDR for the VSTS 2008 SP1 client. This set of features will allow the VSTS 2008 client users to have a good experience when connected to a TFS 2010 team project, but will not provide full 2010 functionality.

Things that you should know:

Most admin functionality can only be performed from a new client.
- For example, we block PCW from the 2008 client to the 2010 server.
- We require the admin to have a 2010 client.
In Work Item Tracking, we added hierarchy and other link types which the older client does not support. The user experience is being improved with the GDR so the 2008 client user can distinguish which queries are supported and which do you need the 2010 client for.
Work Item Tracking, also has a new location for Reports with the addition of the Team Project Collection structure. The GDR will allow the 2008 client to navigate to the new report location.
Shared Documents, Process Guidance and the Project Portal locations can be configured so again we need the GDR to assist with the new navigation.
Test Case Management is also being enabled in the 2008 client using the GDR.
Version Control is improving the rename scenarios in the GDR.
There are a bunch of error messages which will be more helpful as well.

Readme Topics

I know that people don’t read the Readme files (I’m guilty too) – so here are the headings from the Readme in the hope that you’ll at least browse these for potential issues first :)

Installing
- Upgrade Breaks Links on the SharePoint Products and Technology Portal
- Some Visual Studio Team System 2010 Features Not Available After Upgrade
- Initial Configuration of Team Foundation Server Should be Run From MSI Program or by Command Line
Uninstalling
- Need to uninstall TFS Object Model before uninstalling VSTS if installed from the web
Product Issues
- Managing Users on Upgraded Team Projects Might Result in Error TF50620
- Cannot Install Team Foundation Build Service on Windows XP
- Require SSL Option Not Supported
- No Work Item Only View feature in Team System Web Access
- You Can Only Associate a Single URL with a Team Project in Team Explorer
- Team Foundation Server Service Account must be different then the account used for installing Team Foundation Server
- Uninstall Team Explorer Does Not Remove Visual Studio Shell
- Installing Team Foundation Server on a Windows Domain Requires a Live Connection to the Domain Controller
- Team Foundation Server Name May Not Be Over 14 Characters
- Do Not Launch Teamfoundation.msc Directly or Add to Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
- Changes to Lab Management Network Location Tab Requires an IIS Reset
Converters
- VSSConverter.exe Not Supported
Office Integration
- Office Integration Requires Manual Installation of Office Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA) on Windows XP
- Visual Studio Team System 2010 Installation Program Appears After You Launch Microsoft Project
Process Templates and Team Project Portal
- No Process Guidance Updates
- Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) 5.0 Process Template Incomplete
- Remote Portal Running as Network Service Can Cause Broken Dashboards
Reporting
- Team Foundation Server Stops Collecting Reporting Data from the Team Project Collection
- Team Foundation Server Reports Are Out-of-date After Install/Upgrade
- Team Foundation Server Data Warehouse Custom Adapters Do Not Work
Test Integration
- No Test Steps, Repro Steps or Associated Automation Controls in Team System Web Access
Compatibiltiy
- Team Explorer 2008 or older client users can create new build definitions but they will not be able to edit them or to edit other, existing build definitions.
- Team Explorer 2008 or older clients will be able to submit changes that affect gated build definitions, but they will not be prompted with the confirmation dialog and, if their check-in affects multiple gated definitions, it will fail.
- Team Explorer 2008 or older clients will not be able to manage build resources using the “Manage Build Agents” dialog box.
- Microsoft Project plan documents created using a Team Explorer 2010 client, break when opened from a Team Explorer 2008 or older client.
- Navigation to non-default Shared Document, Project Portal and Process Guidance locations is broken for a Team Explorer 2008 SP1 or older clients.
- Navigation to new Reports is not supported for a Team Explorer 2008 SP1 or older clients.
- Work Item Tracking Queries with new functionality are not supported for a Team Explorer 2008 SP1 or older clients.
- Rename in Version Control is not supported for Team Explorer 2008 SP1 or older clients.
- Test Results Publishing is not supported for a Team Explorer 2008 SP1 or older clients.
- How to connect to Team Explorer 2010 to Team Foundation Server 2008
- How to connect a Team Explorer 2008 SP1 to a Team Foundation Server 2010 Server
- Team Foundation Server 2010 administrative functions are only supported using Team Explorer 2010.

Book Review of Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action

grantholliday — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:16:39 GMT

Earlier in the year I was contacted by Manning Publications to participate in the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP). They provided me with an unedited draft of a new book "Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action" (ISBN 1933988592) by Jamil Azher and asked me as a TFS subject matter expert to post a review to my blog and Amazon.

Contents:

Chapter 1: TFS and the practice of software development (free download)
Chapter 2: Exploring the Changes in TFS 2008
Chapter 3: Introducing VSTS 2008 Database Edition
Chapter 4: Understanding branching in Version Control
Chapter 5: Understanding Branch Policies
Chapter 6: Understanding Merging in Version Control
Chapter 7: Understanding Team Build
Chapter 8: Versioning Assemblies using Team Build
Chapter 9: Configuring and Extending TFS
Chapter 10: Using workflow with TFS

After reading through the 10 chapters (~500 pages) of the draft I can recommend the book to these groups of people:

You're using TFS on a day-to-day basis but you want to know "more" without having to spend hours scouring MSDN and learning it yourself.
You've been using TFS 2005 and you're about to (or already have) upgraded to TFS2008. This book has a focus on the changes and new features introduced in TFS2008.
There is a strong focus on Team Foundation Build. One of the biggest investments in TFS2008 was Team Build, so it's understandable that Jamil has 3-4 chapters that are build related.
Extensibility. The book explains all the different extensibility points in TFS and provides original and practical code samples for building your own extensions.

One of the challenges for all technical books is that sometimes the information is out of date by the time your book goes to print. From the screenshots I can see that Jamil started writing when TFS 2008 was in it's "Beta 2" release. Since then, the product and a Service Pack have shipped to address some of the most common issues. There has also been work by the community and product team to improve guidance and documentation.

The real value in the book for me was the practical examples. Even as somebody who has been deeply involved in the TFS community and now the product team there are plenty of examples in the book that I haven't seen before:

Building code from multiple team projects
Patterns for centralized / distributed team build systems
Code submissions system (gated checkin)
Custom controls to show the build status in a work item
Integrating with SharePoint KPI dashboards
Using Windows Workflow with Team Build

With everything considered this is a book worth reading if you want to further leverage your existing investment in Team Foundation Server 2008 and learn more about Team Foundation Build 2008. Great work Manning and Jamil!

How do you install Team Build?

grantholliday — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:43:40 GMT

The first step should always be “Am I licensed for it?”. This is something you’ll have to determine for yourself but the answer is usually yes. Refer to the Visual Studio 2008 Team System Licensing White Paper for all the details. Here’s an except:

It is important to note here that while there will be server-to-server communication between Team Foundation Server and the device hosting Team Foundation Build, no Team Foundation Server CAL is required for that device as part of the build process as long as the users managing the build process have Team Foundation Server CALs. In addition, Team Foundation Build is considered “additional software” and may be freely redistributed onto build servers without requiring any additional Team Foundation Server licenses for that build server.

The second step will be “Where are the setup files?”. In Team System 2005 and 2008, Team Build is included on the Team Foundation Server media under a subfolder called BUILD. You can also access it from the AutoRun dialog that shows up when you mount the media.

You’ll need a service account to run team build as. Two words of advice/warning:

Don’t use the TFSSERVICE account for build!
Don’t use an account that has administrative rights!

The reason for this is quite simple: TFSSERVICE is a “God” user in TFS – it can do absolutely anything. You don’t want to allow anybody to run a build with these credentials.

After this, the installation is pretty straightforward. Enjoy!

Parallel builds of solutions within one Team Project

grantholliday — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:29:00 GMT

With Visual Studio Team Build 2008 there is no way to run two builds from within the same Team Project at the same time, although two builds in different Team Projects can run in parallel.

Update: I got a few questions about this above statement and I'd like to clarify it since it is a little ambiguous.

You cannot configure a single build agent to build more than one definition per team project in parallel in TFS 2008
You can have two build agents building a definition each from the same team project

Just like with Team Build 2005 you can run builds in parallel if they are from different team projects.

This is often confused with a MSBuild 3.5 feature called “parallel builds”. This allows you to make better use of multi-processor/core machines, as MSBuild can scale-out across the available processing power.

Each MSBuild process (including the main or parent process started from command line) contains a component called the node. Projects are processed and built by the node component. Thus using “maxcpucount” of 2 will result in 2 MSBuild processes. If your projects have dependencies on other projects that are being built in parallel, then you will need to set appropriate project to project references so that dependent projects get built first.

Aaron Hallberg describes how Team Build is able to make use of the parallel builds feature, but it still doesn’t remove the limitation of one running build per team project.

Another common question is: What is the purpose of team Build Agents if you cannot use them to transparently scale out?

Obviously this is one of the goals for the future but there wasn’t enough time to get it into TFS2008.

The current April CTP of Rosario has the build controller / agent functionality implemented. When you queue a build, you queue it against a controller which manages a pool of agents. Take a look at Willy-Peter’s Team Build blog post on the Rosario April CTP for more information.

How to: Make Team Build get a previous version

grantholliday — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:35:04 GMT

In Team Build 2008 there is a property called GetVersion. Here’s what the description from Aaron Hallberg’s blog says about it:

GetVersion. Passed to the Version property of the Get task. Defaults to SourceGetVersion (see below), but can be overridden to retrieve a particular version from source control.

To use this property to build a previous version of the source code you have three options:

Additional MSBuild Parameters dialog

Queue a new build and in the "Additional MSBuild Parameters" box, put:

/p:GetVersion=CXXXX

Where XXXX is the changeset you want to build. See screenshots here.

TFSBuild.rsp – MSBuild Response file

Or, put the same option in the TFSBuild.rsp (response) file. The contents of this file are passed as command line parameters to MSBuild.

/p:GetVersion=CXXXX

TFSBuild.proj

Or, Add a property into the TFSBuild.proj Team Build project file.

<PropertyGroup>

<GetVersion>CXXXX</GetVersion>

</PropertyGroup>

You don’t have to specify a changeset either. You can specify any valid versionspec. See the versionspec heading under Command-Line Syntax for more options.

With TFS 2005 you would have needed to change the core implementation of Team Build.
See Aaron Hallberg's "Building a Specific Version with Team Build" blog.

Another thing to keep in mind is – What version of TFSBuild.proj will you be using to build the previous version of the code? What I typically do is store the TFSBuild.proj file alongside the source code in the branch. That way when you branch the code and you need to make build script changes, they are isolated and merged back with the code changes.