Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Preview of the build notification tray applet power tool for TFS 2008
[UPDATE 12/21/07] The build notification tool has now become part of the TFS Power Tools for TFS 2008! It has new features and quite a few fixes (not to mention that it's a signed binary), so I've removed the attachment from this post. We would have loved to have included in TFS 2008 a build notification tray applet along the lines of CCTray for CruiseControl. However, we didn't have the time in the schedule to do it. As a result, we're going to be releasing one as a power tool. You may remember seeing the spec for this on Jim Lamb's blog. Swaha Miller, a developer on Team Build, imp...
TFS 2008: Controlling the number of threads used in uploading and downloading files
The TFS version control client object model normally uses up to eight threads from the thread pool to upload or download files. This same mechanism is also used in pending adds: Files are opened to determine whether they are binary or text, so batches are sent to the server while other batches are being examined on disk. It also uses eight threads. Some customers have encountered a problem where a firewall will consider these multiple simultaneous connections to the server to be suspicious activity and block them (e.g., interpret them as a DOS attack). In TFS 2005 there was no way to control th...
Changing TFS email notifications to link to Team System Web Access
Neno Loje has written a blog post that shows you the steps to change the links in the TFS work item alert emails into links to work items in TSWA. The standard links point you to a read-only page, which is not nearly as useful.Check it out! Changing TFS email notifications to link to Team System Web AccessTechnorati tags: tfs, team foundation, team system web access, tswa
VSTS 2005 and 2008: Building Database Projects with Team Build
Jon Liperi, a tester on Team Build, has put together the post below that explains a number of the issues around using Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (DBPro) with TFS Build. Jon previously worked on the DBPro team, so he knows his way around it quite well. Here are the issues that he covers. This information applies to both the 2005 (8.0) and the 2008 (9.0) versions of VSTS and TFS. Building Database Projects with Team Build by Jon Liperi Recently, we have seen more questions about building database projects with Team Build. It is absolutely possible to build these project...
We need your help: Patches to apply to TFS 2008 beta 2
Brian has written a post, Practicing servicing for TFS 2008, with links to six patches. We need your help in installing these patches and letting us know what issues you run into. The goal is to make servicing TFS 2008 better than it was with TFS 2005. Folks using web projects under version control in Visual Studio will notice fixes for several issues.I want to point out the patch for the build agent (aka Build SKU) in particular (the patch does not apply to Team Explorer). This patch will update a couple of assemblies (DLL files) on the build computer (aka build machine or build...
Dave McKinstry on Build in TFS 2008
Dave McKinstry has written a couple of posts on his experiences with Team Build in TFS 2008. In Introduction to Team Build 2008 for Team Build 2005 Users, he goes over the major new features and how certain things like handling workspace mappings are improved over TFS 2005. His post includes screenshots and more. It's a great companion to the basic guide post. I can't help but quote a couple parts that I enjoyed the most. If you haven't already gotten a chance to play with TFS 2008 (Beta 2), I recommend it. My experience is that it is solid and seems to work better than the RCs wor...
TFSBuildLab beta 2 for TFS 2005
I mentioned TFSBuildLab a month ago when it hit beta 1. Peter Blomqvist and Mathias Olausson have been hard at work and have now released beta 2. They expect to hit 1.0 in the near future. If you are looking for features like continuous integration and scheduled builds in TFS 2005, you'll want to give this a try. What is new in Beta 2? Service Support for tracing using trace listeners Made automatic notification registration optional Removed the need for LDAP to resolve email for notifications Admin Client Conte...
TFS 2008 Beta 2 upgrade fixes are now available
We discovered and fixed several issues that blocked some users from upgrading from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 Beta 2. You can get the instructions and download the two updated executables at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C4015D2F-2383-4270-9AAD-97129590F31D&displaylang=en. Overview SYMPTOMSWhen you upgrade a Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server installation to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008 Beta 2 you may receive one of the following errors: CAUSE more... For those who are interested, here are a few more details on the Team Build upgrade issues fixe...
How to construct the Team System Web Access 2005 URL to a file in version control
Grant Holliday asked for an explanation of how a Web Access URL should be constructed to for a file in TFS version control, similar to the work item links explained in the TSWA 2005 FAQ. Hakan responded with the details, which are shown below. http://[TeamSystemWebAccessSite]/UI/Pages/Scc/ViewSource.aspx?scc-item=[ItemData] ItemData is the HtmlEncoded form of the query string, such as “id=10&cs=-1” For example, if the file id is 151611, HtmlEncode(“id=151611&cs=-1”) -> “id%3D151611%26cs%3D-1” So the URL would then ...