30 August 2006

Team Build Sidekick Released

Those folks over from Attrice have done it again and released another useful utility in their line of Team Foundation Sidekicks - the Team Build Sidekick. This is an add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that adds a few new features to the context menu for Team Build Types.

If you've worked with Team Build Types then you already know how inconvenient it is to make modifications to them. First, you have to go to version control and locate the correct TFSBuild.proj file and check it out. Then you have to open it for editing to modify the XML. Although this isn't overly difficult, it does take you out of the normal flow of Visual Studio.

The Team Build Sidekick add-in simplifies this process by providing a "Check Out for Edit" option directly on the context menu when you right-click a Team Build Type. Selecting this option will check the TFSBuild.proj file out and open it for editing automatically. Much simpler than the previous process.

Once the TFSBuild.proj file has been checked out, you get three other (new) context menu options - Edit, Check In Changes, and Undo Changes. Very convenient.

You can also download the source code for this add-in as well as read an article describing how it was built.

This is a great time saver for anyone working with Team Builds in Visual Studio.