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.

VS/TFS 2008 SP1 – Installation Tips

Well, Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (VS 2008 SP1) has been out (RTM’d) for about three days now and several tips have materialized across the Visual Studio community that may help save you some time.  These tips are broken out into Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio.

Updating Team Foundation Server 2008

• When upgrading a Team Foundation Server, Installation order is important (read the installation guide).  As per the guide, “In deployments where the application tier and a client tier component are installed on the same computer, you must install SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 before you install SP1 for Team Foundation Server. Otherwise, you will not be able to install SP1 for Team Foundation Server.”
• If you upgrade from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 but do not install SP1 after the upgrade, Team Foundation Server will no longer function.
• If you have Visual Studio 2008 installed on your application-tier server and you want to install SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 you must also install TFS 2008 SP1.  If you install only one service pack, you will create an unsupported configuration.
• If you have a standby application-tier server, you must install SP1 on the standby application-tier server if you install it on the primary server.
• In order to update client components such as Team Explorer, you must install SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 – SP1 for Team Foundation Server 2008 includes only server updates and does not update Team Explorer.

Updating Visual Studio 2008

• If you are upgrading from SP1 Beta, be sure to run the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool before you install the RTM version of SP1.  This utility cleans up several items, including:
  • Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB949325
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB944899 (v1)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB945140 (SP1 Beta)

Miscellaneous

• If you’re having issues downloading VS 2008 SP1 on a network that uses Microsoft ISA Server, take a look at this post.
• As per this post:
  • If you get a Windows Update prompt to reboot during the installation of SP1, ignore it.  Wait until the SP1 installation is complete and then reboot.
  • If you have a pre-release of the Team System for Database Development GDR (that supports SQL Server 2008) installed, you will need to uninstall and reinstall after upgrading to SP1.
  • You can’t create the admin mode/slipstream TFS installer when running on a 64-bit OS.  TFS will be supported on 64-bit operating systems with the “Rosario” release.

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Released

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 have been released.  You can read the details of what’s included as well as download the service pack here.

You can also read this post and this post from Brian Harry that covers some of the features in detail.

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Almost Here

A while back I posted about Visual Studio 2008 & .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Beta).  This was on May 14th.  Based on the download text for SQL Server 2008 RTM, Service Pack 1 is a required dependency and will be available after August, 11th.

Also, the .NET Rocks PodCast #365 announces that SP1 is already available so the show must have been released a few days earlier than expected :-)  The description on the web site for this PodCast states that SP1 will ship around August 11th as well.

At any rate, it appears that SP1 will be available within the next week.

VSLive! Las Vegas

Several weeks ago I was informed that I had been selected to present at this year’s VSLive! in Las Vegas.  Although I have presented at other conferences in the past (e.g. Heartland Developers Conference and Tulsa TechFest) this will be the largest conference I’ve presented at to date.  I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about it all.

I will be presenting on Using Team Build in the “Real” World on Thursday, October 16th at 08:30.

I’m looking forward to meeting new people and learning new things.  So, if you’re planning on attending VSLive! in Las Vegas this year and have an interest in Team Build (or Team Foundation Server in general) be sure to look me up.

Omaha Team System User Group

We’ve had yet another successful gathering of the Omaha Team System User Group.  After moderating one of the Birds of a Feather sessions at last month’s Tech-Ed conference, I decided to try something similar with this month’s user group meeting format.

Rather than schedule a speaker for this meeting I decided that we would open the floor up for any Team System-related topics for discussion amongst the group.  Being the middle of the summer and having changed the format to not include a speaker I didn’t expect the same turnout that we typically get at other meetings.  We ended up with a total of 15 attendees which was perfect for sitting around a few tables and having some conversation.

Some of the topics we discussed included:

• Certifications – are they important (i.e. do they really matter)?
• Training – what types of training resources are available for Team System.
• Gotchas – what kind of “gotchas” have other group members ran across while working with Team System.
• APIs – what type of experience do other group members have with working with the TFS Object Model.
• How is it being used – i.e. how is Team System being used throughout the community.
• FinalBuilder – just bringing an awareness to the group that FinalBuilder has some great TFS support.
• Etc.

We all had some great discussion for about an hour and a half and I think everyone in the room, especially myself, left with having learned something new.

The meeting format seemed to work out great so I believe this is something we’ll do at least once per year.

DelayedBuildTask

A few days ago a fellow co-worker asked me if I could create a simple build task that would allow anyone on their team the opportunity to cancel a build, once it has been queued, before the build actually did anything.  The idea was simple:

1. A new build gets queued.
2. The build sends out an e-mail notification (via a custom task) informing the recipients that a new build has been queued.  The e-mail message also has a link that, when clicked, will cancel the build.
3. The build waits a pre-determined amount of time (e.g. 5 minutes) giving the e-mail recipients a chance to cancel the build before it continues.
4. If the build is not canceled, the build will proceed as usual once the delay has expired.

The driving reason behind this request was to allow any active testing to continue without being interrupted by a new build – i.e. the testers have the ability to cancel a build.

Building the custom task was pretty simple – it basically just sends out an e-mail message (based on a customizable HTML template) and then waits for the specified number of seconds (the default is 300 seconds).

The more interesting piece of the puzzle was creating a simple, one-page web site that, when called, will cancel a build.  The web page takes the build URI as its only parameter and utilizes the Team Foundation Server web services API to cancel the build.

All in all it worked out nicely.  If this sounds like something that may benefit your team, you can check it out on the MSDN Code Gallery here.  The source code as well as the binaries are available for download.

The next challenge (that was presented to me today) is to also include a link in the e-mail notification message that, when clicked, will instruct the build to continue immediately.  This one will take a little more thought…

Click here for more information on the DelayedBuildTask.