Team Explorer 2005 Update for TFS 2010 is Available

If you are using Visual Studio 2005 (along with Team Explorer 2005) to access Team Foundation Server, an update patch has been released that will allow Team Explorer 2005 to communicate with Team Foundation Server 2010.

In general, after installing the update patch, you will be able to use Visual Studio 2005 to access legacy (2005) TFS servers as well as TFS 2010 servers.  If you switch to a TFS 2010 server, you will be able to continue using the basic functionality of TFS but will not be able to utilize new TFS 2010 features (e.g. Branch Visualization, creating new Team Projects, etc.) - you must use Visual Studio 2010.

Also, when connecting to a TFS 2010 server, you will need to enter the full URL for the TFS 2010 Team Project Collection – e.g. http://TFS2010Server:8080/tfs/CollectionName.

Click here for more information.

Downloads:

• Team Explorer 2005 forward compatible update for TFS 2010
• Team Explorer 2008 forward compatible update for TFS 2010

VS 2008 & 2010 - Virtual Machine Images

If you’re looking for a set of virtual machines for testing Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2008 or 2010, then you’re in luck!  Brian Randell has just posted about a new set of virtual machine images ready for downloading.

For the 2008 images, the new expiration date is January 31st, 2011.  The 2010 images expire much earlier due to the nature of the beta products – April 9th, 2010.  However, by that time, it’s hoped that the final release of the 2010 products will be out, or if not (because of the delayed launch), then at least a new release candidate should be available by that time.

There are a total of seven images – four 2008 images and three 2010 images.

Read the full post for details.

Team Foundation Sidekicks Updated (v2.4)

First of all, if you are using Team Foundation Server and don’t currently make use of the Team Foundation Sidekicks (from Attrice Corporation), you should.  That said, Attrice has released an update (v2.4) to their current set of Team Foundation Sidekicks.

This update resolves a few issues with the previous release as well as one new feature - “Users View Sidekick”, which offers the following features:

• Display all users in Valid Users group on TFS server
• Search users list by user name or display name

This is the last planned release that will support TFS 2005/2008.  All future enhancements will target TFS 2010 with a beta (for VS 2010) possibly available by the end of the year.

For more information:

• http://www.attrice.info/blog/2009/11/12/team-foundation-sidekicks-2-4-release/
• http://www.attrice.info/cm/tfs/index.htm

Cross Platform Support for TFS Gets Better

Yesterday, Microsoft announced they will be purchasing the Teamprise-related assets of SourceGear.  The Teamprise tools allows software developers to take advantage of various features of Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (e.g. work item tracking, automated builds, and reporting features) from other environments such as Macintosh- and Linux/Unix-based systems.  There is also an Eclipse plug-in that provides functionality almost identical to that of the Team Explorer client that integrates with Visual Studio.

Having this technology more accessible (e.g. via Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate) will no doubt go a long way in helping development teams that work across multiple platforms (e.g. .NET, Java, etc.) work and plan with an integrated set of ALM tools.  Having those tools integrated into their development environment of choice – Visual Studio or Eclipse, is the icing on the cake.

The Teamprise technology will be available with Visual Studio 2010 and can be acquired in one of several ways:

• Purchased separately with one TFS CAL (for approximately $799).
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN will include the Teamprise technology.
• Free upgrade to the Microsoft branded product to all current Teamprise owners once released.

Support will continue to be offered by Teamprise until the Microsoft branded product is released, at which time, Microsoft will take over support.

More Information:

• Press Release
• http://www.microsoft.com/pathways/teamprise/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/11/09/microsoft-has-acquired-the-teamprise-client-suite.aspx
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4473

Visual Studio 2010 – Links for Getting Started

If you are venturing to try out the latest Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release then you may be looking for as much information regarding this release as you can.  There is too much information available to condense into a single post so here are a few links to help get you started:

Links & Downloads

• Visual Studio Home – this is the official Visual Studio home page.  You will be able to view information specific to each SKU, as well as download the latest beta, once the site is updated (hopefully tomorrow).
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 can be downloaded from the MSDN Subscribers download site.  General availability is expected to start on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 on the Microsoft Downloads site.
• Team Foundation Installation Guide for Visual Studio Team System 2010 – use this link to download the CHM file for the TFS installation guide (beta 1 and 2 guides are currently available).  This guide is also included in the Team Foundation Server 2010 download (in the root folder).
• Compare the various Visual Studio 2010 SKUs here.

Documentation

If you’re looking for documentation for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, then you can find (hopefully) everything you need on the MSDN site.  Click here for the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 documentation.

Client Compatibility

If you’re going to be running Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with older clients and/or Team Foundation Servers (e.g. 2005 and/or 2008) then there are some compatibility issues that you will need to take into account.  This blog post covers these in great detail.

Licensing

Along with the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 announcement came details regarding the new SKUs that will be available.  Brian Harry has posted some highlights regarding these changes.  Buck Hodges has also posted a few details here.

Learning More

Here are some links to miscellaneous posts and videos regarding some of the new Visual Studio 2010 features:

• Team Foundation Server 2010 Key Concepts
• TFS 2010 for SourceSafe Users
• TFS 2010 Project Management
• TFS 2010 Work Item Tracking
• TFS 2010 Admin, Operations & Setup Improvements
• Where is TFS Basic?
• Setting up Offline help/Docs in Visual Studio 2010 Beta2
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Debugger In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 IntelliTrace In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Code Analysis In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Sampling and Instrumentation Profiling In Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Concurrency Resource Profiling In Depth First Look
• Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – a Channel 9 video.

BLOGs to Watch

• Brian Harry
• Buck Hodges
• Willy-Peter Schaub
• S. Somasegar
• Charles Sterling

Reporting Bugs

If you happen to discover any issues (i.e. bugs) with Visual Studio, please report them on Microsoft Connect.  This is the site where you can search for existing issues, create new issues, and follow them as they move through Microsoft’s development life cycle.

Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2 Released

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2 is now available for download on the MSDN subscribers download site.  This is a milestone release for Microsoft for several reasons:

• This release (Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2) is generally considered to be feature complete (barring any loud feedback concerning some missing feature that just can’t be left out)
• It comes with a “Go-Live” license.  This means that you can use Visual Studio 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2010 to produce production systems and the upgrade to the RTM version will be supported.
• The Visual Studio 2010 SKUs have been modified to (hopefully) reduce confusion – specifically, the confusion between Visual Studio and “Team System”.  The moniker “Team System” is no longer used with Visual Studio although the ALM tools are still very much part of Visual Studio.  In fact, all of the Visual Studio 2010 SKUs that include and MSDN subscription include a full Team Foundation Server (TFS) license for production use as well as one CAL.  This is an exciting change because it makes TFS a much more affordable solution.

The official list of Visual Studio 2010 SKUs include:

• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Professional
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Professional with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Premium with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Ultimate with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Test Elements 2010 with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Team Foundation Server 2010
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Team Lab Management 2010
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010

The “Express” editions are not included in the above list as they have not changed.

Also, you will be seeing the “Ultimate Offer” promotion from Microsoft that will bump your MSDN subscription up to the next level based on your current MSDN subscription status at the time Visual Studio 2010 is launched (which is scheduled for March 22nd, 2010).  So, if you currently have an MSDN subscription, make sure you check out the details of this offer (details in a later post) prior to the launch date.

There are a ton of other details regarding this release that are too numerous to list right now (e.g. new MSDN subscription benefits as well).  Expect to see (lots) of posts regarding the changes in Visual Studio 2010 in the near future.

For now, if you are running Visual Studio Team System (2005 or 2008) you may want to download the new beta and try out the new features.  In fact, you can even use it for your production development if you like.

If you happen to discover any issues (i.e. bugs) with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, please report them on Microsoft Connect.  This is the site where you can search for existing issues, create new issues, and follow them as they move through Microsoft’s development life cycle.

For further information, check out these links:

• Microsoft names Visual Studio 2010 dates
• Testers to get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this week; final by March 2010
• Brian Harry’s BLOG
• Willy-Peter Schaub’s BLOG

VSTS 2010 Beta 2 – Almost Here

According to this post by Brian Keller and another by Brian Harry, VSTS 2010 Beta 2 is “just around the corner” and will ship with a “Go Live” license which means:

1. You can use VSTS 2010 Beta 2 for production development
2. The upgrade path to VSTS 2010 RTM will be supported

Brian Keller also provides links to a Microsoft Word document and a PowerPoint presentation that can assist you in planning for the VSTS 2010 upgrade.

Team Foundation Server for the Masses

Early last year, I posted 10 Reasons for TFS with Small Teams that listed 10 reasons for using Team Foundation Server even if you thought your team may not be big enough to get any benefit from it.  I still stand by those 10 reasons.  However, reality has a way of overturning even the best of reasons.  For example, cost of software licenses and hardware carry a lot of weight when it comes time to calculate ROI (whether real or perceived).

Yesterday, Brian Harry announced some major changes coming in TFS 2010 that will go a long way in bring Team Foundation Server to the masses – a new feature called Team Foundation Server “Basic” Installation.

Brian covers three aspects of this in his post:

1. Price - Although he doesn’t disclose the licensing options and/or price, he does go so far as to say it will be as easy and cost effective to get as Visual SourceSafe has been in the past.  This is very exciting as cost seems to be one of the top (if not the top) reason against bringing Team Foundation Server into a small shop – i.e. those same small shops that use Visual SourceSafe today.
2. Pre-Requisite Hardware – TFS 2010…
• Can be installed on a domain controller, which is great if you’re a small shop and that is the only server hardware you have.
• Can be installed on not only server OSes but also client OSes.  Supported operating systems include: Windows Vista, Windows 7 Home Premium, and above.
• Supports 32-bit and 64-bit so no matter what type of server you’re running, TFS will work for you.
3. Installation Experience – the installation experience for TFS 2010 has been drastically improved.  The TFS installation wizard has three options: “Basic” (the main point of what I’m writing about here), “Standard”, and “Advanced”.

So, what does the “Basic” installation option get you?  Pretty much everything the “Standard” installation of TFS provides with the exception of SharePoint and Reporting capabilities.  This means you have the following features:

• Version Control
• Bug Tracking
• Build Automation

And, as Brian mentions in his post, the nice thing about the “Basic” installation option is that you can always reconfigure the installation down the road as your needs grow.

Read more about this announcement in Brian’s post here.

TFS Work Item Manager/Dashboard

A few days ago, Telerik announced the availability of two new free products built to provide an informational view into your Team Foundation Server projects.  These products are TFS Work Item Manager and TFS Project Dashboard.

TFS Work Item Manager highlights:

• Work Item grid filtering, grouping, and aggregation
• Area and Iteration filtering using single and multi select modes
• Filter query results using a tree of areas or iterations
• *Unique Task board view of work items independent from any process template
• Print work item cards for the board in your room
• Iteration schedule
• Paste clipboard contents into a work item
• "New Query by example” saves your query for other team members
• Search the title and description of query results as you type
• Built with RadControls for WPF

TFS Project Dashboard highlights:

• Displays workload data within various widgets
• Shows important indicators in real time, at a glance including:
• Build history
• Recent check-ins
• Assigned tasks
• Bug history
• More

The following TFS process templates are supported out of the box: CMMI Process Improvement, MSF for Agile Software Development, and Agile Software Development with Scrum.  Custom process templates are also supported.

I have to admit that my current favorite feature of these tools is the Task Board view.  This view represents your work items as “sticky notes” that you can drag from one status to another.  In our case, we are projecting onto an interactive Panaboard which allows us to physically move a work item from one status into another by pointing and dragging with our fingers.  Very cool!

If you’ve been looking for another view into the information buried within your Team Foundation Server then these tools are worth checking out.

Check for Warnings/Errors Check-in Policy

A few days ago a fellow co-worker asked if I knew of a TFS check-in policy that checks for Visual Studio compilation errors and/or warnings.  I wasn’t aware of such a check-in policy (although it may exist out there somewhere) so I decided to go ahead and create it (who doesn’t love a challenge?!).

When active, this check-in policy will evaluate the current Visual Studio solution to determine if any build warnings and/or errors are present.  If so, the check-in policy will fail and will prevent the code from being checked in (this can, of course, be overridden).

To enable this check-in policy:

1. Download and install the CheckForWarningsPolicy from here.
2. Right-click the desired team project within the Team Explorer client and select the “Team Project Settings—>Source Control” menu item.
3. Click the “Check-in Policy” tab and click “Add”.
4. Select the “Check for Compilation Warnings and Errors Policy” and click OK.
5. Click the “Edit” button and select whether you’d like to check for warnings, errors, or both and click OK:

Once enabled, you will see a list of policy failures in the Policy Warnings tab of the Pending Changes pane:

If you hover over the policy failure, the ToolTip will display the remainder of the filename along with the line and column number and project name of the failure.

UPDATE: You can now double-click on the policy failure to navigate directly to the location within code where the failure occurred (assuming the location information is available).

You can download the CheckForWarningsPolicy from here.

Deleting Work Items in TFS – a UI

If you work with Work Items in VSTS/Team Foundation Server then you’ve probably had the desire to delete a work item at some point.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Just right-click a work item and select… wait, there’s no Delete option?  That’s right – the Team Foundation Client does not include any functionality for deleting work items from TFS.

Although it’s a tad inconvenient, you can delete work items from TFS by installing the Team Foundation Server Power Tools  (October 2008 release or greater).  Of the many features available as part of the power tools, there is a command called destroywi that can be used to delete work items.  For example, to delete the work item ID 1234, use the command:

tfpt destroywi /server:tfs-dev /workitemid:1234

Although this is a relatively straightforward task to perform, not everyone is comfortable with the command line interface not to mention you have to look up the work item ID(s) ahead of time.  To ease the process a little bit, I created a simple UI that sits on top of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools that allows you to easily select a Team Foundation Server and Project to query from.  You can run an existing query to display a list of work items from which you can select one or more work items to be deleted.  You can also enter the work item IDs directly (as a comma-separated list) if you prefer.

Here is a screen shot of the utility after running the All Work Items query for a Demo project:

When you select one or more work items to be deleted, click the Delete button.  You will be prompted to be sure you want to delete since the action cannot be undone (i.e. it’s permanent).

DISCLAIMER: We have been using this utility in multiple production environments for several weeks now and have not experienced any issues.  However, since this utility physically deletes work items from a Team Foundation Server (via the Team Foundation Server Power Tools), use at your own risk :-)

Download the Delete Work Item utility here.

VSTS 2010 Feature List

Brian Harry has started a series of posts detailing the new features in Visual Studio Team System 2010.  In his first post, he lists the high-level features along with associated blogs that provide further details.  He will be drilling into more detail with future posts but this is a great list if you’re just wanting an idea of what’s new in VSTS 2010.

Omaha Team System User Group

Due to the recent birth of our new son, Zachary, I am somewhat late in getting this post on-line.  Although I am a little behind in getting this posted, I still want to get the word out about our last presentation at the Omaha Team System User Group.

On March 24th, Farm Credit Services of America (FCSA) once again hosted the user group meeting.  Many thanks go out to Russ Wagner for his continued help and for accepting the position as co-leader of the Omaha Team System User Group!

This meeting’s topic was presented by Jeremy Novak, a developer at Farm Credit Services of America.  Jeremy presented on a new open source product called Remote Test Runner – or, RTR. RTR was originally developed at FCSA for internal use to aid in the automation of customer acceptance testing (sometimes referred to as service-level testing).  RTR was published to Microsoft’s CodePlex site following the presentation.

Remote Test Runner is a unit test assistance tool that allows the user to exercise Visual Studio-based test classes outside of Visual Studio. RTR reports on Data-Driven tests at the data field level as opposed to the unit test method level. Failed asserts no longer abort a test.

For more details about RTR, check out this previous post or the RTR project site on CodePlex (link below).

References:

• Remote Test Runner PowerPoint Presentation
• Remote Test Runner on CodePlex
• Omaha Team System User Group

Team System Live

I came across a (relatively) new site yesterday called Team System Live.  This site is built on the Ning platform and was put together by Chris Tullier.  It provides a great view into various live events related to Visual Studio Team System.  There are various event types, including:

• In Person events such as workshops and user group meetings
• On-line events hosted by Microsoft Office Live Meeting
• On-line chats

You can add your own events or you can search for existing events by keyword or browse based on event type or date.  Once you locate an event of interest, you can easily add it to Outlook or iCal.  As of the time of this post there were 32 on-line events and 28 in person events listed on the site.

The site also hosts an on-line chat session every Wednesday from 12:00-1:00pm (CST/-6GMT) to discuss all things related to Team System.  In fact, I just finished participating in today’s chat session a few minutes ago.

Along with the great information regarding events, there are links to other sites including Team System-related sites, bloggers that blog on Team System, user groups, etc.

So, if you’re looking for some great “live” events related to Team System want to chat with other Team System users, then I highly recommend checking out Team System Live.

VSTS 2010 + .NET Framework 4.0 CTP

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP) has been made available for download (as of 26 Oct 2008).  You can get the latest bits here.

It is about a 7.5 GB download so be prepared for it to take a little while, especially since it was just released.

There is a ton of new functionality in VSTS 2010, far too much to enumerate in this post.  However, you can check this previous post of mine as a starting point for getting more details.

Download VSTS 2010 .NET 4.0 CTP

VSLive! Las Vegas - Day 3

Well, the "regular" conference sessions are now over.  All that is left is the post-conference session which includes an all-day hands on lab for LINQ.  I will spend part of the day in this session until it's time to head to the airport.

Once again, I spent the last session day in ALM sessions related to Team Foundation Server.

The first session of the day was mine, "Using Team Foundation Build in the "Real" World".  I thought the session went very well (I suppose the feedback will tell the real story :-).  There was great attendance and a lot of great questions being asked.  I really enjoyed presenting at VSLive! and hope to do it again in the future.

The remaining sessions covered implementing cross platform/language builds using TFS, migration vs. integration of TFS, and programming the TFS object model.

Although the sessions were great, I enjoyed talking to the other attendees and speakers the most.  It's always nice to meet other people facing the same issues as you and that have the same interests.  Because of the sessions I attend and the people I talked to, I have a lot of new information, techniques, and practices that I can take back with me and apply to my daily work.

All in all, it's been a great week at VSLive! Las Vegas.  I may have even set some kind of world record while being here - I'm not much of a gambler and, in fact, I may be the first person ever to stay in Las Vegas for five days without gambling a single cent :-)  I did enjoy a lot of other attractions while here in Las Vegas, however.  I attended a show (the Phantom of the Opera), spent time swimming (don't get a chance to do that much at home), walked the "strip" countless times, watched a battle between two pirate ships, and spent an average of $20-$25 on just about every meal I ate :-)  Speaking of food, the lunch meals provided during the conference were second to none.

If you're interested in the slides from my presentation, you can get them here.

Visual Studio 2010 Links

There has been a lot of information coming out over the past couple of weeks regarding Visual Studio 2010 so I thought I'd consolidate a list of links that provide some information about what may be included in the next release:

Informational Posts

• Visual Studio Team System 2010 Overview - a quick overview of what's being accomplished in VSTS 2010.

PodCasts and Videos

• RadioTFS Interview with Habib Heydarian on VS 2010 Developer Features.
• Historical Debugger (10:47) - demonstrates the use of the Historical Debugger in VSTS 2010.  This promises to be a great feature for developers everywhere!
• An early look at Team Foundation Build 2010 with Jim Lamb (34:46) - a great video with with Jim Lamb demonstrating some of the new features in Team Build 2010.  I've also written a summary of the features covered by Jim here if you're interested in the abridged version :-).
• Channel 9 Videos - Channel 9 has quite a collection of videos now showcasing some of the new features of VS 2010.  There's enough video here to keep you busy for a while.

BLOGs

There are a lot more blogs related to Team System than these listed below.  However, these are some of the blogs I read more often:

• Habib Heydarian
• Buck Hodges
• Jim Lamb
• Brian Harry
• Team Foundation Server Observations Bucket

There is no doubt a lot of other information out there but this should help you get started if you're just now starting to take a look at what's coming down the road with Visual Studio 2010.

Team Foundation Build 2010

I just finished watching a great video from Jim Lamb on Channel 9 covering some of the new features for Team Foundation Build 2010.  The video is about 35 minutes long and is well worth the watch.  Here's a quick synopsis of what's covered in the video:

• Team Foundation Build 2010 will support Windows Workflow 4.0.  This feature alone would make a worthy upgrade to Team Foundation Build.  The new Workflow UI being designed for the .NET Framework 4.0 will be included in the build type editor within VS 2010 providing a fantastic user experience for modifying build types (can you say "XML - not for me, thank you" :-).  There will be several Team Foundation Build-related Workflow Activities included out of the box with VS 2010 and I would imagine several 3rd party/open source activities will appear on the scene shortly after its release.
  
• "Gated" check-ins will be supported.  This feature, when turned on, will ensure that a given build type successfully runs before any artifacts are checked into version control.  This will be a great enhancement for teams making use of continuous integration within Team Foundation Server.
  
• "Private/Buddy" check-ins will be supported.  This feature is very much like "Gated" check-ins except that the check-in, and resulting build, are treated as a separate, private build associated only with the user who initiated the build.  You can even set distinct retention policies for "Private" builds.
  
• Support for Symbol Server Integration.  With the integration of Symbol Server into Team Foundation Build, the debugger within Visual Studio will know how to navigate to the correct source code within TFS Version Control.
  
• Build Controllers.  You will have the ability to configure "pools" of build agents which can then be associated with a build type.  The build server can then utilize the least active build agent when starting a new build.
  
• Build Agent Tags.  You will be able to associate tags with build agents.  For example, you may tag a build server as "SQL Server 2008", meaning that SQL Server 2008 has been installed on that server.  Another build agent may be tagged with "MOSS 2007", etc.
  
• "All Inclusive" Build Agent.  There is a desire to have the build services include support for MSTest and DBPro without having to install the Test or DBPro SKUs.  This will be a great convenience and something that I believe that should have been included from the first version.
  
• Log Enhancements.  The Build Log has been improved tremendously and is much easier to read and navigate.  You can now, for example, click a link on an error in the build log and be taken to the exact location within source code where the error occurred.
  
• Build Deletion Control.  When deleting build types, you will now have the ability to be more specific as to what gets deleted.  For example, you can choose one or more of the following (all are selected by default): Details, Drop, Test Results, Label, Symbols, or Build.  This can be done manually and/or specified within the retention policy settings.

The video goes into a little more detail about each of the above items as well as a few others that I haven't mentioned.  It is really nice to see that Team Foundation Build is getting some attention.  I think the current product is good but there is a lot of room for improvement and it appears that is the direction it's heading.

Presentations, Races, and MVP!

Lately, I've been quiet because I've been busy working on my presentation for this month's VSLive! Las Vegas conference.  I'm looking forward to presenting on Team Build and meeting a lot of new people as well as catching up with some old acquaintances.  This will be my first time to Vegas so it should be a great time all around.

Along with that, I was also preparing for my first ever adventure race - the Berryman Adventure.  The race was held this past weekend, September 27th, and took us just under 13 hours to complete.  The disciplines included hiking/running, some swimming, canoeing, and mountain biking through the Ozarks in southern Missouri.  We did not come close to winning the race but we did complete it, which was a big accomplishment since it was our first race.  We enjoyed it so much that we plan on participating in as many as we can next year.

To top everything off, I received a message today informing me that I have been selected for Microsoft MVP - Team System!  Needless to say, I am excited, honored, and humbled all at the same time.  I've always enjoyed sharing knowledge and ideas with the developer community and now I have even more incentive than ever before.

VS 2008 SP1 Tidbits – 1 of X

Sometimes it’s the little things that excite me the most :-)  For instance, in the recently released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (VS 2008 SP1), there are a few nice enhancements to the Team Explorer and Source Control Explorer that I find extremely helpful.  These enhancements include:

• The ability to right-click on a build type within Team Explorer and select “View Configuration Folder”.  This will open the Source Control Explorer pane and take you directly to the folder containing the selected build type.  This is a great time saver – especially now that TFS 2008 supports storing your build types in any folder you choose.
  
   
  
• Having non-solution files automatically checked out when you start modifying them.  This is especially useful in build type (TFSBuild.proj) files.  How many times have you forgotten to check out a build type file prior to editing it?  This is no longer an issue with SP1.  Nice!
  
• The ability to drag-n-drop files directly into the Source Control Explorer pane.  This is a really nice feature and yet another great time saver.
  
• One other feature that I really like is the (minor) modification to the Source Location and Local Path within the Source Control Explorer.  The Source Location can now be copied to the clipboard (nice for documentation, e-mail messages, etc.) and the Local Path is now a hyperlink control which will open the mapped folder in Windows Explorer when clicked.
  

I realize that these enhancements are small in comparison to some of the other enhancements in SP1 but I still find them very useful.  It’s nice to see some of these time savers make it into a service pack release instead of having to wait for the next major release of Visual Studio.