Sam Mullis

Manual Merge Issue Workaround in Visual Studio Team System December CTP

2005-01-12T20:38:00Z

One of our CTP users reported the following in the Microsoft.Private.Whidbey.TeamSystem.Teamfoundation newsgroup:

I am giving hateras a spin and am trying how the multiple checkout handles
merge conflicts.
So I created a merge conflict on purpose using two separate workspaces on my
local harddrive C:.

When I try to check in I get the expected merge conflict dialog and then I
choose to manually merge. But then I get an exception telling me that I
require a local workspace to resolve the conflict. But I don't know how to
create a workspace more local than my local harddrive?

I attached a word document with the screen prints and some additional
comment. Can somebody tell me if this is a known issue with the current
bits? If so is there a workaround?

I have verified that this is a bug in the December CTP. To work around this issue, you can configure an external merge tool.

Here is a quick summary of how to configure an external merge tool (specifically, Visual SourceSafe’s merge tool) in the December CTP (this assumes you used the default installation options when you originally installed, which means that Visual SourceSafe was installed. If not, you need to add Visual SourceSafe to the installation):

Within the Visual Studio IDE, while connected to a Team Foundation Server, select Tools->Options…
Expand the “Source Control” node and select “Visual Studio Team Foundation”
In the right pane, click the “File Extensions…” button
In the “Configure User Tools” window, click “Add…”
In the “Configure Tool” window, enter “.*” (you can tailor specific tools for specific extensions – for this example, we’ll set up a single tool for all extensions. Feel free to play with adding others) in the “Extension” box and select “Merge” for the “Operation”.
For the purpose of this example, we’ll use the Visual SourceSafe merge utility. Click on the browse button (“…”) for “Command”, and find ssexp.exe. This should be in the “Microsoft Visual SourceSafe” folder contained in the “Program Files” folder. Select ssexp.exe and click “Open”
For the arguments, enter “/merge %1 %2 %3 %4 %6 %7”
Click “OK”, “OK”, “OK” to accept the changes and return to the IDE

At this point, you should be able to perform the merge.

Next post – creating a conflict and merging. (You can look at the original news post (thread title = “Manual merge erro: local workspace required, but both are on local harddrive”) for a document that outlines the steps that originally discovered this bug if you want to work ahead (note that you cannot access the attached document via the web-based news viewer)).

Back In Blog

2005-01-11T19:51:00Z

That’s right! After spending the last several months with my head down working hard on testing Visual Studio 2005 Team System (and not having time to write about it), I am breaking back into the blogosphere.

First of all, though I am behind the times on this subject, I want to mention that the December CTP is available on MSDN. My next few posts are all focusing on the December CTP release of Visual Studio Team System, including some workarounds to common issues that are being discovered by our users. Please look at Rob Caron’s blog for lots more about installation of the CTP, and utilize the newsgroups for additional dialog (Buck has a nice post about using the newsgroups via NNTP here).

After that, look for more posts relating to the Team Foundation Server. My testing responsibilities are primarily in the server realm, and that will influence my authoring. My question to you – what questions do you have about the server? Do you have subjects that you would like to see me tackle from the server side?

I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System Available

2004-09-01T04:48:00Z

MSDN Subscriber Downloads has the DVD image available for subscribers, weighing in at just over 3 GB.

This refresh contains the first Community Technology Preview of the Visual Studio 2005 Team System Server.

See Rob Caron's post about the prereqs you should get while in the download area.

YAHTB - Yet Another Hatteras Test Blogger

2004-08-04T06:18:00Z

Hello from Research Triangle Park, NC, home of the Visual Studio 2005 Team System Source Control development team. I am a tester on the Hatteras team.

I have been with Microsoft since September of last year. Prior to Microsoft, I was a system / software engineer for Sony-Ericsson (formerly Ericsson). I am one of the few native North Carolinians on the team, born in the metropolis of Clinton, NC. I have been in the Raleigh / Durham, NC area since my junior year in high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. I continued my education in this area at North Carolina State University and graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering and a minor in math.

Since starting on the hatteras team as a Software Development Engineer / Test (SDE/T), I have worked on testing the status command and now am squarely focused on stress and performance testing for the hatteras server.

I am looking forward to blogging about hatteras and whatever else may come up over the course of time. Stay tuned for more about performance and stress testing! Let me know if you have specific requests you’d like to see on this blog, and I’ll see about getting around to them.