Jeff Beehler's Blog : VSTSR

Dealing with the Team System 2010 CTP expiration

jeffbe — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:36:00 GMT

If you’ve been using the Team System 2010 Community Tech Preview VPC, you’ve probably noticed that the instance of Visual Studio within the VPC is getting close to expiring. We expect that it will cease functioning around the end of the year and instead return the message “The evaluation period for Visual Studio Trial Edition has ended”:

Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before we release our next update to Team System 2010 so you’ll need to take action to keep this version working for a while. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy resolution to this problem. It involves turning off the synchronization between the host OS and the VPC. This enables you to set the time in the VPC to a 2008 date while you live in 2009. As you might imagine, Team Foundation Server doesn’t like it much when time goes backwards so you’ll want to make sure that you don’t use the VPC and then set the clock backwards after that point. Ideally, you can use a fresh VPC and disable your clock prior to launching it for the first time.

Disabling the host OS synchronization of the VPC. This is a change to the .VMC file (see below) that basically disables the clock synchronization between the VPC and the host OS. This means that time in the VPC moves forward only when the VPC is being used. As a result, we have essentially 2 months of runtime (not wall time) for the VPC which is way more time than people should need to run the CTP, even if they’re demoing it regularly to others.

Here are the changes necessary for the .VMC file (specific to a particular VPC and not a system-wide setting):

<integration>
    <microsoft>
        <mouse>
            <allow type="boolean">true</allow>
        </mouse>
        <components>
            <host_time_sync>
                <enabled type="boolean">false</enabled>
            </host_time_sync>
        </components>

Bunch of other stuff that I am skipping over to save space...
    </microsoft>
</integration>

Hopefully this will allow you to have plenty of time to evaluate the CTP and send us feedback on what you like and don’t like about what we put together in this release. As you might imagine, we’re hard at work putting together the next release and your feedback over the next period of time will really help us make sure that the next release is even better than the current CTP. And, yes, we will release both a VPC and native install version of the CTP so that folks will have flexibility in how they deploy and evaluate the next release.

One important note: don’t attempt to join the VPC to a domain since the domain will set the time within the VPC and thus cause Visual Studio to expire.

Many thanks to Brian Keller and his detailed description of the various activation messages associated with the CTP as well as to Virtual PC Guy who provided the original information on how to disable the VPC clock synchronization.

If you’ve converted this VPC image to HyperV following Grant’s instructions, be sure to read Cameron’s update to learn of a similar workaround for HyperV.

Happy CTPing!

Jeff

April Rosario CTP now available!

jeffbe — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:36:29 GMT

I'm happy to announce that the next Community Technology Preview of Rosario (officially known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” April 2008 CTP) is now available. Customers can immediately begin downloading the VPC images from our download page. Because of the size of the VPC, I'd recommend using a download manager, such as the one referred to here, to download the follow part of this release:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part01.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part02.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part03.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part04.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part05.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part06.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part07.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part08.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part09.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part10.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part11.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Apr2008RosarioCTP _12PartsTotal.part12.rar

For this release we worked on a number of key scenarios that we'd like you to try out. To help facilitate your evaluation, we've included samples and walkthroughs within the VPC to demonstrate these new features. Here's a list of walkthroughs broken out by product:

Architecture Edition

Exploring the existing code structure
Designing process flow as activities
Designing user interactions with systems
Designing system functionality as components
Visualizing and designing types in systems
Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets
Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
Identify the test impact of code changes
Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.
Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.
Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.
Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

Planning a testing effort
Executing manual test cases
Verify the fix
Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

Managing an Agile schedule
Easier reporting from Excel
Managing features with the CMMI Process
A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer
An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window
A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches
A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality
Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)
Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

As you can see, we’ve been busy since our last CTP! As with our previous Rosario CTP, this release is not a beta. We’ve done a reasonable amount of testing on the bits to ensure that most the major features work to some degree and that the key experiences listed above work well but have not done any of the configuration or deep testing that we do for a beta release that we expect customers to use on a regular basis. As such, we encourage you to take the release for a spin and evaluate the new features we’ve added but please don’t expect to use it for any sort of production usage and understand that any data that you enter into the system cannot be migrated to future releases. And by all means, any applications written with these bits may not be redistributed in any way.

We’re releasing this CTP primarily for two key reasons: practice shipping and collecting feedback. Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of the first as we’ve worked out the kinks associated with building, testing and releasing these bits to you. Hopefully in the coming weeks and months, we’ll get a lot of the second from you. Feedback in the form of bugs and suggestions can be submitted via http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. Make sure when you submit issues through Connect that you indicate the product version as being “Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” (April 2008 CTP)”. That will ensure it gets to the right folks for consideration. If you have a question or would like provide feedback to the product team, we've created a special forum specifically focused on Rosario: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1736&SiteID=1. We look forward to hearing from you.

Please join me in congratulating the Team System team on this release.

Woohoo!

jeff

November Rosario CTP now available!

jeffbe — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:11:59 GMT

I'm happy to announce that the next Community Technology Preview of Rosario (officially known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” November 2007 CTP) is now available. Customers can immediately begin downloading the VPC images from our download page. Because of the size of the VPC, I'd recommend using a download manager, such as the one referred to here, to download the following seven parts of this release:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part01.exe

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part02.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part03.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part04.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part05.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part06.rar

http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/f/9/bf9c1b30-ca2d-4381-8e9e-8b5db9701437/Nov2007RosarioCTP_TFSVSTS_7PartsTotal.part07.rar

Architecture Edition

Visualizing Interaction Sequences between Service-Oriented applications
Using the Distributed System Designers and the Web Service Software Factory to build WCF applications
Designing and Visualizing Interactions between classes

Development Edition

Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with Rule Sets
Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
Identify the test impact of code changes
Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Test Edition

Planning a testing effort
Executing manual test cases

Team Foundation Server

Managing user stories with the Agile Process
Managing features with the CMMI Process

In addition, we've included support to build setup packages with Windows Installer XML (WiX) technology. You can learn more about that here and here.

As with our previous Rosario CTP, this release is not a beta. We’ve done a reasonable amount of testing on the bits to ensure that most the major features work to some degree and that the key experiences listed above work well but have not done any of the configuration or deep testing that we do for a beta release that we expect customers to use on a regular basis. As such, we encourage you to take the release for a spin and evaluate the new features we’ve added but please don’t expect to use it for any sort of production usage and understand that any data that you enter into the system cannot be migrated to future releases. And by all means, any applications written with these bits may not be redistributed in any way.

We’re releasing this CTP primarily for two key reasons: practice shipping and collecting feedback. Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of the first as we’ve worked out the kinks associated with building, testing and releasing these bits to you. Hopefully in the coming weeks and months, we’ll get a lot of the second from you. Feedback in the form of bugs and suggestions can be submitted via http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. Make sure when you submit issues through Connect that you indicate the product version as being “Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” (November 2007 CTP)”. That will ensure it gets to the right folks for consideration. If you have a question or would like provide feedback to the product team, we’ve created a special forum specifically focused on Rosario: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1736&SiteID=1. We look forward to hearing from you.

Finally, we have refreshed our page on MSDN focused entirely on Rosario. On it we’ll have links to the latest downloads, blog articles, documentation and other key information. I’d suggest bookmarking this site and returning regularly to keep up on the latest for the release.

Please join me in congratulating the Team System team on this release. It’s exciting to me that even in the face of significant effort on the recent release of Visual Studio 2008 that we’ve been able to make impressive progress in these important areas. I hope you agree...please take a look and let us know what you think.

Woohoo!

jeff

Initial feedback on Rosario starts flowing in

jeffbe — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:22:10 GMT

It hasn't taken our early adopters much time to start providing feedback on Rosario since our announcement just under two days ago. We've received our first bug through Connect, seen our first questions on the Rosario forum and just recently Grant Holliday (one of our MVPs) has posted a great article outlining our hierarchical work item support features. Pretty amazing!

First Rosario CTP now available!

jeffbe — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 23:51:47 GMT

It’s with great pleasure that I announce the availability of the first Rosario CTP (officially known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” August 2007 CTP). Customers can immediately begin downloading the VPC images and learning more about the specific features in this release from the Rosario CTP whitepaper.

For this release, we have focused on a number of important experiences which form the core of Rosario:

Development scheduling & tracking – by using the hierarchical work item support in Excel, users will now be able to complete work breakdown activities within Excel. For instance, users can import Requirements into Excel and then break down that requirement into Features and from there into associated Tasks. The work item links are automatically created and maintained through Excel so that when these changes are published to the TFS server, the relationships are preserved for everyone to query and report on. In addition, using these relationships, the Work Breakdown spreadsheet can roll up completed and remaining work values from Tasks to their associated features and requirements to show high level status.
Requirements test coverage and manual testing – test cases are now stored and managed like other work items. As such, a user can run a query to determine which Requirements do not have any test cases associated with them then create new Test Cases at that point. We have greatly enhanced our support for creating manual test cases so that each step can be called out with specific instructions and expected results. When running the manual test, a video recording of the screen can be made in case a bug is found during testing. If a step fails, the tester can file a bug directly from the manual test runner which will prepopulate the bug form with the test steps, a copy of the video recording and a link to the test case making it much easier for testers to create actionable bugs for developers.
Managing dependencies – using the hierarchical work item support, users can now indicate predecessor and successor relationships between tasks making it much easier to determine what work must come first and what work is blocked behind it. This will enable team members to prioritize their work appropriately and for project managers to use reports to determine bottlenecks within their team.

With this release we have preloaded the VPC with a sample Team Project so that you can hit the ground running in evaluating some of the new work item tracking features. Look for the eBanking Team Project to get started.

This release is a CTP (Community Technology Preview) and not a beta. We’ve done a reasonable amount of testing on the bits to ensure that most the major features work to some degree and that the key experiences listed above work well but have not done any of the configuration or deep testing that we do for a beta release that we expect customers to use on a regular basis. As such, we encourage you to take the release for a spin and evaluate the new features we’ve added but please don’t expect to use it for any sort of production usage and understand that any data that you enter into the system cannot be migrated to future releases. And by all means, any applications written with these bits may not be redistributed in any way.

We’re releasing this CTP primarily for two key reasons: practice shipping and collecting feedback. Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of the first as we’ve worked out the kinks associated with building, testing and releasing these bits to you. Hopefully in the coming weeks and months, we’ll get a lot of the second. Feedback in the form of bugs and suggestions can be submitted via http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. Make sure when you submit issues through Connect that you indicate the product version as being “Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” (August 2007 CTP)”. That will ensure it gets to the right folks for consideration. If you have a question or would like provide feedback to the product team, we’ve created a special forum specifically focused on Rosario: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1736&SiteID=1. We look forward to hearing from you.

Finally, we have created a page on MSDN focused entirely on Rosario. On it we’ll have links to the latest downloads, blog articles, documentation and other key information. I’d suggest bookmarking this site and returning regularly to keep up on the latest for the release.

Please join me in congratulating the Team System team on this release. It’s exciting to me that even in the face of significant effort on the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2008 that we’ve been able to make impressive progress in these important areas. I hope you agree...please take a look and let us know what you think.

Woohoo!

jeff