August 2006 | Buck Hodges

Team Build blogger: Aaron Hallberg

Buck HodgesAugust 29, 2006Aug 29, 200608/29/06

Aaron Hallberg, a developer working on Team Build, has taken the plunge and started a blog. Those of you who frequent the MSDN Team Build forum will probably recognize the name. You now have a blog to go with the name!After getting post #1 out of the way, Aaron shows you how to insert custom build step from a custom task.

Two good posts: Building projects with shared code and using Web Application Projects (WAP)

Buck HodgesAugust 29, 2006Aug 29, 200608/29/06

Last week, the folks at Vertigo Software wrote a couple of really good posts involving Team Build.The first one, written by Jeff Atwood, is about building projects that have code shared from a different team project. The crux of the problem is that in v1 Team Build doesn't allow mappings in the Workspace.xml file to span team projec

New Team Build content on MSDN

Buck HodgesAugust 28, 2006Aug 28, 200608/28/06

The VSTS User Education blog announced new MSDN content on using and customizing Team Build. Check it out!New Team Foundation Build Customization Content on MSDN We are adding new content on explaining Team Founadation Build customization targets and tasks. Check out the following topics on MSDN: Understanding Team Foundation Configurat

Finding the changes between two labels in TFS version control

Buck HodgesAugust 28, 2006Aug 28, 200608/28/06

Carl Daniel (code) and Robert Downey (code) each wrote and posted code to show the changesets between two labels in TFS version control. They each took the same basic approach: call QueryLabels() to get the set of items in each label, find the highest changeset version for each set of items, and then call QueryHistory() with the range of

Dev lead for Team Build

Buck HodgesAugust 24, 2006Aug 24, 200608/24/06

For three years I worked on Team Foundation Server Version Control. Most of my contributions were to the version control object model, the tf.exe command line, and general infrastructure. After v1 shipped in March, we reorganized the TFS organization. Version 1 of TFS Team Build was developed by a small team in India, led by Gautam

Check-in policy: Requiring a comment

Buck HodgesAugust 23, 2006Aug 23, 200608/23/06

A check-in policy to require a comment has always been a frequent request. Jeff Atwood has posted a convenient installation package (.msi) for James Manning's check-in policy to require a comment. Installing the Check for Comments Check-In Policy In a previous entry on adding a new check-in policy, I provided the source code for a c

A tool for reporting expiration dates for RC and RTM trial editions of Team Foundation Server

Buck HodgesAugust 23, 2006Aug 23, 200608/23/06

As some customers have found out the hard way, the TFS release candidates have started to expire without warning at the end of the 6 month (180 days) period. The TFS trial edition (RTM) will start to expire next month, again without warning. It also expires 6 months after installation.This morning, Brian Harry posted a tool that yo

Combining OneNote and Outlook would make OneNote very useful

Buck HodgesAugust 17, 2006Aug 17, 200608/17/06

I've written before about putting files directly into Outlook to make them securely available at work and at home. Part of the reason for that is to have documents that just contain my thoughts on changes we should make, features we should consider, and so on. Those are the kinds of things that would fit well into OneNote.&nbs

Squeet: Get RSS feeds in your inbox

Buck HodgesAugust 17, 2006Aug 17, 200608/17/06

I tried using an RSS aggregator, but it didn't fit the way that I wanted to work. All of the feeds are trapped on the machine running the aggregator. I wanted to be able to get to them from work and home. Web-based aggregators solve that issue but still fell flat for me because I never remembered to go check them.

Links to MSBuild tasks to extend your build system

Buck HodgesAugust 16, 2006Aug 16, 200608/16/06

Build systems need to do all sorts of things, from updating web sites to deploying databases. Often, the tasks needed to do these things are available, but finding them can be a challenge. I've collected links to various MSBuild task collections that you can plug into your Team Build scripts. Hopefully, you'll find something

Buck Hodges