[UPDATE 7/31/2007] I've updated the link with the main MSDN page for TSWA. There's also an FAQ now. We have just released Team System Web Access power tool for TFS 2005! You can download it now. Team System Web Access (formerly known as TeamPlain) is a Web interface to Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server. Fe...
The following question came up today, and I thought it would be useful to post. One thing I didn't mention was what happens in the upgrade process when you move from a 2005 server to a 2008 server. The 2008 server stores in the database some properties that were previously stored either in the tfsbuild.proj (build agent computer, build direc...
If part of your build process is to check in a file, such as an updated version file, you wouldn't want that checkin to kick off another build. You'd be stuck in an infinite loop. To prevent that problem, simply put the string ***NO_CI*** in the checkin comment. The code that examines a changeset to determine whether to kick off a new ...
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, including Team Foundation Server 2008, is now available for download. As mentioned in Soma's post, Beta 2, unlike beta 1, includes the "go live" provision in the license, meaning that you can use it in production. We've been using TFS 2008 beta 2 on our main internal dogfood server now for the last two months ...
A year ago I became the dev lead for Team Build. As of this month, I'm now also the dev lead for Team System Web Access (TSWA), which is the name of the group that resulted from our earlier acquisition of devBiz Solutions, makers of TeamPlain Web Access. Hakan, Ahmet, and Serkan have joined our team in North Carolina, relocating from Tu...
A question came up a couple of times recently about an issue with the timestamps on the files involved in a build always being the current time. The issue is that folks have customized their deployment process to deploy only files where the timestamps are newer. Folks then ask for an option to have get set the timestamp to the timestamp...
The next MSDN chat is next Wednesday. I'm going to try to be on the first one. Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. There will be two sessions: Join the chat on Wednesday...
Martin Woodward has posted a nice list of properties from Team Build that he has found useful. While some of the properties were also in TFS 2005, quite a few are new for TFS 2008 (aka Orcas). Some of the properties, such as RequestedFor, are properties of the current build that are set by the server, and thus you wouldn't set them your...
Peter Blomqvist and Mathias Olausson have undertaken an ambitious project to provide things like build queuing and continuous integration on top of TFS 2005. While we have these features in TFS 2008, this project provides some of these essential features for use with your current TFS deployment. TFSBuildLab - Project Description TFSBuildLab...
While some of the build agent properties are available in the VS GUI, buried in the tfsbuildservice.exe.config file are a number of options that control key aspects of the build agent and the build. This file existed in TFS 2005, but it had fewer options. While you don't have to change anything for the build agent to work in the normal ...
