Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Sorting by multiple columns in work item tracking
Recently I was showing someone the results of a bug query and sorting by more than one column in work item tracking in Team Explorer. When the person said he didn't realize that feature existed, I decided it would be worth posting. This also works in Team System Web Access. To sort by more the one column, simply hold the Shift key when clicking the column header of the column you would like to sort next. If you want to sort descending instead of ascending, continue to hold the Shift key and click the header again to flip the sort ordering. In the screen shot below, I'm sorting first by Priority ...
Why the CheckInEvent doesn’t list all of the files in a changeset
I recently received a question from someone about the CheckInEvent. We subscribe to the Notify event using the BisSubscribe tool. Basically we have many applications that share some projects, but as TFS has no mechanism for sharing we have written our own in house app. We have hooked into Notify for the CheckInEvents and we check each file after checkin to see if it is one of our shared files. If it is then we bounce it around to various locations etc.. All has been working fine until recently we started getting problems on large check ins. After some investigation I have noticed that the string eventXml...
New book on MSBuild and Team Foundation Build
There is now a book dedicated to MSBuild and Team Foundation Build. The book is written by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi and William Bartholomew. Sayed has written about MSBuild before, both in books and MSDN Magazine articles, and William is a Team System MVP with a lot of experience in customizing the build process in Team Foundation.If you want to learn more about using build in Team System, you need to get a copy. Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build Product Description The build process when code gets assembled to see how and how well it works is a cri...
Fix for TFS Build 2008 SP1 to speed up your builds
Quite a few folks have reported longer build times and noticed that the build details view has a lot more output in it, and as a result of the extra output being logged, the builds are slower. Aaron has written a post about a hotfix to speed up your builds in the SP1 version of Team Build. This hotfix, like many others for TFS, is available on the MSDN Code Gallery site.KB958845: TFSBuild TargetsNotLogged property fails to cut down noisy buildsTechnorati tags: team foundation server 2008 SP1, team build
Team System site overhauled
Sharon Elkins has written a post about the newly-redesigned Team System web site. She has some details on the transformation, but one thing that stands out is the page reduction. It's got about 75% fewer pages, which means a bunch of old stuff is gone.Check it out and give her your feedback!Technorati tags: team system, vsts
How to determine the latest changeset in your workspace
[UPDATE 7/25/14] Added equivalent API calls. When you run get for your entire workspace without any argument, you are requesting that the server give you the latest set of files. Later you might wonder what changeset was used in that get. To figure that out, you can use the following history command from the root (top) of your workspace. tf history . /r /noprompt /stopafter:1 /version:W Here's what that command means. The ". /r" part says to look at the current directory recursively, which is why you must run it from the root (top directory) of your workspace. Here I've specified "/noprom...
TFS Branching Guide 2.0 released
Bijan Javidi announced the release of TFS Branching Guide 2.0 on CodePlex. Check it out and be sure to send them your feedback on it. They are always looking for ways to enhance and make it even more useful. TFS Branching Guide 2.0 Welcome to the Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance Community Site! The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around branching and merging with Team Foundation Server. It's a collaborative effort by VSTS Rangers in cooperation with VSTS MVPs, Microsoft Services, and VSTS Product Team. Why the 2nd release? Since the first ...
Installing an evaluation copy of Windows Server 2008 and extending the evaluation period
More than a year ago, I posted a reference to Jeff Atwood's post on extending the evaluation period for Windows Vista.KB article 948472 describes the process for Windows Server 2008 and includes instructions on installing an evaluation version of Windows Server 2008 from the standard media as well has how to set up a recurring task in Windows Task Scheduler to extend the evaluation period to 240 days. How to extend the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period SUMMARY This article describes how to extend, or re-arm, the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period. The evaluation period is also known as the "activation g...
Using Team Foundation Build with BizTalk and SSIS projects
Unfortunately there are several types of projects that do not work natively with MSBuild. Jim Lamb, program manager for Team Build, has put together a few posts with pointers on how to get these to work with Team Build. Technorati Tags: team foundation server,team build,biztalk,sql ssis,msbuild