michal.Log : TFS2008

Using tf.exe in PowerShell ISE or other custom environments

michalma — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:35:00 GMT

Recently a few folks from our and other team tried working with TFS inside PowerShell ISE (http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/scriptfanatic/archive/2008/12/30/windows-powershell-integrated-scripting-environment-ise.aspx).
What they discovered is that tf.exe thinks that its output is redirected and switches to noprompt mode. Which means that running
tf.exe checkin

will check in the code instead of bringing up UI. Ouch.
The problem is that ISE is really redirecting the output of tf.exe in order to display it. tf.exe is trying to be smart and suppress UI if it detects it. Fortunately there is easy workaround since TFS 2008.
If you set environment variable:
TFS_IGNORESTDOUTREDIRECT=1

We will stop detecting output redirection. You need to add /noprompt to force no ui mode.

Hope this helps :)

Msscci 2008 with MS Access 2007

michalma — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:55:00 GMT

I have played a little with MS Access 2007, verifying that it's working with TFS Msscci 2008. In order to get SCC integration, you need to install Access Developer Extension - a add-in that allows Access to use any Msscci provider (and a few other goodies).

Access does not allow you to change SCC provider, so if you have installed a few of them on your machine, you may check my other blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/michalma/archive/2006/03/01/541255.aspx

Everything seems to be working just fine - you can add tables, forms and queries to TFS, display History, Properties etc. The Source Control toolbar looks really cool.

The unfortunate problem, which we plan to fix in the next release of TFS Msscci is the fact that Access (the same way as VB6) verifies if item is checked out by somebody else, before allowing user to perform checkout. The problem is that we tell that file is checked out even if the pending change exists only in the shelveset, not in the actual workspace. This makes using Access and shelvesets in the same time very hard.

Small Orcas Improvements - part 2

michalma — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 04:00:00 GMT

"Check-in does not check-in". One of the most feared complains from the users. We all check-in files every day (or not, when gauntlet is in use ;)) and everything works fine.But customers are always right (vide Get Latest on Checkout)! So one theory explaining this phenomena say that user encounters conflicts doing check-in.He resolves the conflicts and expects that when Resolve Dialog disappears the files will be checked-in. This is very far from the truth - he needs to try checking in the files again himself.

Why we don't make his life easier by re-attempting to check-in files automatically? Whel, resolving conflicts most probably will change content of the files. Before doing check-in user should at least build sources again to avoid build breaks.

So what we improved in Orcas? It's very psychological feature :) - Resolve Dialog contains label that inform user that check-in failed. Also, when Check-in Dialog is closed we show extra message box, telling user again that he need to try checking-in files again.

TFS Msscci Provider 2.0

michalma — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:31:00 GMT

Just before Holiday Season we released new version of TFS Msscci Provider - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FAEB7636-644E-451A-90D4-7947217DA0E7&displaylang=en. Of course the biggest demand was to allow provider to work with the Orcas Object Model. This means, that if you install Orcas in your organization, you can use it with your VS2003/VB6/FoxPro tools as well, you don't need to install Whidbey just for them. If some dev boxes will still have only VS2005 - you may use old Msscci Provider on them - remember that Whidbey and Orcas client and servers are compatible.

So what changed besides Orcas dependency? We added 2 cool features for VS 2003:

we batch checkins of pending edits, done in multiple projects (before you were getting checkin dialog for each project)
we validate folder you selected during "Open from SCC" to check if it contains project file

We also added support for eMbedded C++ 4 (you could enable it before, casting a small spell - http://blogs.msdn.com/michalma/archive/2007/02/15/msscci-with-embedded-c-4.aspx).

But my favorite is something else (and probably it's not noticed by nobody ;) While testing Msscci provider, we do "Open from SCC" and "Add to SCC" much more often than any person using provider for real work. This means that we spend much more time in "Pick folder item" dialog. In this version we finally cut number of server calls, needed to navigate the server structure and select path we want. I can tell you one thing - it saved Ben and me a lot of frustration, while working inside vpc against our personal, slow tfs servers. :)

Small Orcas Improvements - part 1

michalma — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:03:00 GMT

After Orcas shipped, many people blogged about new big features that were included there (http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffbe/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-team-system-2008-ships.aspx). However, there are also many small improvements, transparent at first to the user, but still allowing him to save time and avoid confusion.This blog post (and at leat one more) is dedicated to those invisible heroes of our day-to-day life :)

Consider workspace mappings. Usually we even don't want to be aware of there existence. Let's just set them (the best is single mapping for whole tree) and forget. Unfortunately sometimes it's not that easy. You work with a project and then you see typo in the local path. Or you have more complex mappings, and you mix to branches in the single workspace. So you type "tf workspace", edit mappings and click OK. The MessageBox is displayed that tells you to perform get in the workspace. If you are in the command line, it's possible that you will do it - it's just "tf get" and you are advanced if you use command line, right ? If you did this in Visual Studio, it's less likely - there is no GET button anywhere. Besides doing get on the whole workspace is really nontrivial - I learnt just recently that you do it by selecting root node in SCE and clicking Get Latest. So you don't do get, the mappings were updated and your files are in the not mapped location, but tfs is aware of them and just waits to move them, as soon as somebody calls get (Most likely surprising the user).

So what we do in Orcas? Very simple - as soon as you changed your mappings, we ask you if you want to do "Get Latest" instead of just warning you. Click Yes and life will be a little safer for you. Just to keep in mind - we will do "Get Latest" so if somebody checked in some changes and you are not ready to get them into your workspace, you probably want to reject doing "Get Latest", and instead sync to changeset that was before those breaking changes.

VS2008 shipped

michalma — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 01:37:00 GMT

As you perfectly know (for example from Brian's blog, and probably hundred others), Orcas shipped. I'm extremely proud, because this is the first big MS product, that I was involved from the beginning. Noone denies importance of the Msscci provider, but the weight of Visual Studio is thousand times bigger than this PowerTool :).

The biggest feature I was involved with, is folderdiff, which I hope you will find useful. Though I'm not sure if I don't use Annotate more often :) And of course we will all benefit from the amazing performance improvements.

Here is list of all new things in this release. Over next days I will blog about smaller features that are not so widely known, but should make life of all users easier.