Buck Hodges

How to build projects in Team Build that only Visual Studio can build

July 13, 2007 Jul 13, 2007 07/13/07

Buck Hodges

Aaron has written a great post on using Visual Studio (devenv) from within Team Build as part of the build process.  If that sounds strange, it's necessary because there are projects that Visual Studio can build, but msbuild cannot.  Projects in this category include Visual Studio setup projects (.vdproj), SQL Reporting Services...

Get: Date and time, read/write vs. read only

July 13, 2007 Jul 13, 2007 07/13/07

Buck Hodges

Periodically we get the following questions about get. The answer to each is no for both TFS 2005 (v1) and TFS 2008 (Orcas).  It's something we considered doing in v1, but we ended up cutting it.  It remains on the list of features to consider for the future. If you have opinions on this or other version control features, you'...

Goodbye to a 200-year old Osage-orange tree

July 7, 2007 Jul 7, 2007 07/7/07

Buck Hodges

This was a 200-year old Osage-orange tree on what used to be part of my grandfather's farm in Charlotte, NC.  This former hay field is now a subdivision (the farm house is directly across the road in the grove of trees in the distance behind the scraper).  The house I grew up in is adjacent to the farm (way over on the...

Orcas: Unattended installation of the build agent

July 7, 2007 Jul 7, 2007 07/7/07

Buck Hodges

You can install the build agent (aka Build SKU) without going through the setup UI if you do the following.  Thanks to Tony Edwards for this information. Edit the msiproperty.ini.   Note that as of Beta 2, the ones that are in there are bogus and are not used.  You have to add two new ones.  This will be fixed before ...

Keyword expansion in TFS

July 7, 2007 Jul 7, 2007 07/7/07

Buck Hodges

Periodically, the topic of keyword expansion comes up, which TFS (at least through 2008) does not support.  At one point during the v1 product cycle, it was a planned feature and was partially implemented.  However, there are lots of challenges to getting it right in TFS version control, and it wasn't worth the cost to finish ...

How to enable code coverage without a test list

July 5, 2007 Jul 5, 2007 07/5/07

Buck Hodges

Aaron pointed out this post by Ben Day that talks about using the RunConfigFile property with a build that runs tests without using test lists (.vsmdi files).  It all boils down to looking like the following (in Orcas, you would specify the $(OutDir) part in the TestContainer's Include attribute, whereas you don't in the TFS 2005 ...

New home for the AssemblyInfo task

July 3, 2007 Jul 3, 2007 07/3/07

Buck Hodges

The AssemblyInfo task has a new home, because the CodeGallery portion of GoDotNet is being phased out.  You can now find it here in the GotDotNet User Samples.The AssemblyInfo task is useful for updating assembly version numbers as part of your build.  Aaron Hallberg explains how to use it with Team Build in his post, Team Build...

MSDN chat with the VSTS (including TFS!) product group is today!

July 3, 2007 Jul 3, 2007 07/3/07

Buck Hodges

The first chat is at 1:00 PM Eastern time, so I'm planning to be in that 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. In addition, discuss what's new in the upcoming Orcas CTP. We ...

V1.0 of the Migration and Synchronization Toolkit has been released!

June 29, 2007 Jun 29, 2007 06/29/07

Buck Hodges

Matt Mitrik, program manager for TFS migration and synchronization toolkit, has announced the release of version 1.0.  Note that it also includes the source code so that you can extend it as well. Check it out! V1.0 of the Migration and Synchronization Toolkit has been released! The first complete version of the Migration and ...

Orcas: Scheduled builds now support building even when there are no changes

June 6, 2007 Jun 6, 2007 06/6/07

Buck Hodges

Back in February, I wrote a post on the build scheduling feature that we've added for Orcas.  In that post, I stated that we designed it such that the scheduled build only occurs if there has been a checkin that affects the build. Based on feedback, we changed it so that you have the option to force the scheduled build to run even if ...