AssemblyInfoTask Fix for Year 2007

For anyone using the AssemblyInfoTask custom build task you may have noticed that it does not work (using default settings) when performing a build in the new year (2007). This is due to a restriction within Microsoft's version number scheme (i.e. it uses 16 bit numbers).

The AssemblyInfoTask home page suggests a work around by modifying the Microsoft.VersionNumber.targets file (on the build server) and changing all occurrences (there's two of them) of "yyMMdd" to "01MMdd". This will work for the remainder of the year, at which point you'll need to change the format to "02MMdd" for 2008.

If you are like most products and have multiple releases every year then you can leave off the beginning number and use the format "MMdd" (this is what we have chosen to do). The assumption here is that the major and/or minor version number will be incremented long before you reach "1231" at which point it will start over again.

Visual Studio 2005/TFS Service Pack 1 Released

As announced on Soma's blog, Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server has been released.

This Service Pack addresses a range of issues that were found through customer and partner feedback as well as our own internal testing. Many of these issues were reported by you and I thank you for taking the time to report them to us. The release also adds a number of customer requested functionality and enhancements to some of the most common development scenarios to Visual Studio that I think you’ll find interesting and valuable.

You can find the full details here.

TFS Bug Item Synchronizer 1.1 for Mercury Quality Center

I'm currently working in a shop that tracks defects in Quality Center but I would like for our development team to be able to work with TFS defects directly from their Visual Studio IDE. I started to work on an in-house solution for synchronizing defects, however, I recently found out about a utility for synchronizing bug/defect items between Mercury Quality Center and Team Foundation Server. Although I haven't used it yet (I'll be trying it out over the next week or so) it looks to be very promising.

Here is a quick rundown of how it works:

1. For every selected defect for synchronization in TestDirector/Quality Center, it creates a matching bug item in TFS (with a link to the original defect).
2. For every selected bug item in TFS, it creates a matching defect in TestDirector/Quality Center.
3. For every defect updated in TestDirector/Quality Center, it updates the matching bug item in TFS.
4. For every update in TFS, it updates the matching defect in TestDirector/Quality Center accordingly.
5. It also offers the possibility of linking one TFS bug item to many TestDirector/Quality Center defects (inside the same project or in different projects) and update all related TestDirector/Quality Center defects when the TFS bug is updated.

It doesn't support attachments at this time but I'm told this capability is coming soon (i.e. possibly next week). I'll post my experiences once I've had a chance to work with it for a little while.

Click here for more information or click here for pricing.

TFS Permission Manager

The SRL Team has released a new utility to help with the management of Team Foundation Server permissions.? TFS Permission Manager 1.0 has allows you to work with all aspects of TFS-related permissions and includes the following capabilities:

Add or remove TFS group memberships, Reporting Services role memberships and SharePoint role memberships

Set Server- and Project-level permissions

Set Area Path and Source Control permissions

Create new TFS users with permissions identical to those of an existing user

Save user permissions as a template and use it later to create new or update existing users

If you have the responsibility?of managing?permissions on a TFS server then this utility could be a big time saver.

You can download the utility here.

Team System Basics Training (200 Level)

Microsoft has made available for download a Virtual PC (VPC) based set of training for Visual Studio Team System basics.? The modules within this training program include:

Module 1 - Overview

Module 2 - Team Foundation Administration

Module 3 - Architect

Module 4 - Developer

Module 5 - Tester

Module 6 - Project Manager

Module 7 - Team Explorer

This is a relatively large download (5GB) and is comprised of eight separate files that must be downloaded and then extracted (a single download would have been nice :-).? The extracted files will take up about 15GB of space and can be ran using Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual Server 2005.

I haven't had a chance to go through the training yet but plan to do so in the near future.? I will post back with any interesting experiences I may have :-)

VS 2005 Add-In for Collapsing Solution Projects

Recently, I've started experimenting with the capabilities of add-ins for VS 2005 because I want to write some extensions for Team Foundation Server. However, before I could really get to work on the more complex add-ins I needed to start with something simple.

For anyone who has ever worked with Visual Studio 2005 solutions that contains multiple projects, you've probably spent a fair amount of time collapsing the project items in the Solution Explorer. So, my first "useful" add-in simply allows you to collapse all solution project items with a single mouse click.

After you install this add-in and run Visual Studio 2005, you will notice a new menu item, "Collapse All", when you right-click on a solution in the Solution Explorer. Selecting this menu option will collapse all project items within the solution.

I'm also planning on adding a few more features to this particular add-in down the road but even in its current state, it's already proven to be a time saver.

You can download the add-in here.

HDC 2006 is "In the Books"

The 2006 Heartland Developers Conference has officially come to a close.  It was two days of a lot of technical sessions, food, prizes, games, socializing, and more.  Although I don't know the official attendee count (yet) it was somewhere around 600 which is pretty good considering this was only the 3rd year for the conference.  Philip and Joe did a great job putting this together (no surprise there :-).  This was the first year I attended HDC and rumor has it that HDC '07 will be in Omaha as well so I look forward to attending again next year - I'm sure it will be even better!

I also had the pleasure of giving a presentation of Team Build at the end of the first day and had a pretty good turn out.  I think the presentation went pretty well considering it was during the 5:00-6:30pm time slot at the end of the first day.  If anyone is interested in the slides used for the presentation, you can get them here.  I had the opportunity to answer a lot of questions during the presentation as well as at the end of the presentation.  This was the first time I had ever presented at developers conference and it was a great experience.  I hope I get a chance to do it again.

There were a lot of great topics covered throughout the two-day conference but some of the highlights for me would have to include the talks on LINQ and Custom Windows Workflow Activities as well as my own presentation on Team Build :-)  I had attended talks on LINQ and Windows Workflow at this year's TechEd in Boston and it's nice to see how well the technology has progressed.

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros

Visual Studio Team Edition for DB Pros CTP6 is now available. Check out Cameron's post for the full details. Here is an excerpt of what's new since CTP5:

• Full SQL Server 2000 & 2005 object support
• Extended Properties Support
• Inline constraint support
• Pre and Post script deployment population during Import Script
• Team Build Support
• Import Schema Wizard ( also integrated with the New Project Wizard )
• The ability to synchronize your project from a database ( selective import essentially, based on differences. We heard your feedback! )
• Refactoring is allowed in files that are in a warning state
• Overall stability and performance
• Fixed many customer reported problems
• Support for 3 and 4 part name resolution when referenced database is present on design instance
• No longer install SQL Express ( you'll notice the download is a LOT smaller! ). You can pick your own SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition instance on the local box
• Display detailed Schema Object properties in the property window for selected objects in the Schema View
• Separation of user target database settings through the user project file

Having support for Team Build should be a definite plus when it comes to versioning a database with an application release. I look forward to playing around with that feature.

TFS FAQ

While bouncing 'round the 'Net this morning I came across the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server FAQ.

I'm sure this page has been around for a while but I thought it was definitely worth reading so I thought I'd pass it along. It's definitely a good "first stop" when you have a question about TFS.

Heartland Developers Conference

It's official - I'll be presenting on Team Foundation Server's Team Build features at the up coming 2006 Heartland Developers Conference.  This will be the first time I've attended the HDC (it's only in its 3rd year) and I'm looking forward to it.

I'll post a link to the presentation materials as the event date approaches.

If anyone out there is attending the HDC this year I'd be interested in hearing from you.