Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Code metrics command line tool
[UPDATE 3/24/12] You can find a real code metrics activity here as part of the Community TFS Build Extensions. Cameron Skinner has announced a new command line tool for generating code metrics. We’ve long gotten requests to be able to generate code metrics from the build. Prior to this tool, code metrics could only be generated from within the Visual Studio IDE. I installed it this morning. The readme link on the download page tells you where it is installed, which is %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop. I wanted to ...
Changes to the work item type schema reference docs
The folks who produce our documentation continue to experiment and find ways to improve our documentation. The most recent change involves consolidating docs. I’d encourage you to take a look and give them feedback. Significant Changes Made to Streamline the Content for Work Item Type Schema Reference A move has been afoot to eliminate topics that no one is reading anyway. By consolidating content into a smaller topic set, we believe that you will more easily access the information that supports you in accomplishing your tasks. In the area of defining and customizing the definitions of work...
Join the TFS development team and help shape the industry
Do you want to be a developer on the TFS team, solve challenging problems, and break new ground in ALM? Then join the TFS development team in Redmond, WA.You’ll notice that we mention cloud computing with Azure below. If you saw the PDC keynote demos this year, you saw some early work on getting TFS running on Azure. If you missed it, go to the 2:09:50 mark of the “PDC10 keynotes with Steve Ballmer and Bob Muglia” recording on the PDC10 site to see Brian Harry demo TFS on Azure (Brian also wrote a blog post about TFS on Azure). We’re working on great new features wi...
Join the TFS development team and help shape the ALM industry
See updated post.
Help improve MSDN – give them your feedback
Please take a moment to provide feedback to the documentation team on the changes they’ve made recently. They want to know what you think. Thanks! We need your input on how well our improvements to the MSDN Library content work for you. Allen Clark has reorganized the topic: "Extending Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management" and would like to know if these updates make the topic more useful for you: "I've been working on streamlining some content in an effort to make it easier for you to get the information that you need. The first place I did this was in the Team Foundation SDK, in...
How to convert a branch back to a regular folder
In an effort to remove a small amount of complexity from the UI, we have the command to convert a branch back to a folder appear only under the main menu and not in the right click menu. The way to convert a branch back to a regular folder is to do the following. Why would you want to do this? The reason would be just to remove the branch from branch visualizations if you’ve decided you never want to see it again. This does not change the branching relationship, so you can still merge to and from the branch as before (it just affects the visualization and the properties you ...
How to figure out whether a change has made it to another branch
[UPDATE 11/5/12] I wanted to add that when using either the hierarchy view or the track changeset view, you can use Ctrl-C when the window has focus to get an image of it copied to the clipboard rather than having to use a screenshot tool. One of the great features in TFS 2010 is the ability to track changesets across branches. A prime user scenario for this feature is determining whether a fix has made it to a particular branch. Here’s an example of how to do that. How to track a changeset number: How to track a work item: If you have a work item that has a changeset link, it’s ev...
How to use the MSBuild debugger in Visual Studio 2010
Dan Moseley, dev lead for msbuild, wrote a debugger for msbuild while on leave(!) back during the 2010 cycle. While it ultimately couldn’t be fully completed and tested to be an official feature, it is in the product with a switch to enable it (it’s off by default). This was a conscious decision made by the VS team, and I think it was a great compromise. It wasn’t something feasible as a power tool, and it’s too useful to have to wait for the next release.Dan has written a series of blog posts on how to use it. Enjoy!Technorati Tags: msbuild
Reports to show you what’s happening with the TFS warehouse and cube
Grant has posted a set of reports that help you understand what’s going on in the TFS warehouse and cube in Team Foundation Server 2010 so that you can deal with issues such as field collisions, which can be very tedious to handle since out of the box we don’t provide easy ways to figure it out. His post includes an attached zip file that you can download and deploy to your TFS 2010 installation. Administrative Report Pack for Team Foundation Server 2010 One of the key components of TFS is the Data Warehouse, which is made up of a relational database and an Analysis Services cube. In ...