Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts

TFS migration toolkit spec posted
The Team Foundation Server migration toolkit spec has been published. Particularly if you are interested in writing version control or work item tracking conversion tools, be sure to check it out and give them feedback.tags: tfs, team foundation, migration, version control, work item tracking

Eric Lee’s Orcas Team Build Screencasts
Eric Lee of Counterpunch Software (former Softie) has started posting about Orcas features in the March CTP.First, he goes through a list of new features with some screenshots. A Baker's Dozen of New Features in Orcas There is nothing like having a new version of Visual Studio to play around with :) Not that Visual Studio 2005 is all that old, but the March CTP of Orcas was just released. I picked up the VPC version last night and gave it a whirl. So far it looks great! I was expecting a very small upgrade to VS 2005, but there are some really substantial features here. Here are a few features that caught m...

How to enable a checkin policy via the version control API
I recently needed to test a new checkin policy that I wrote. In order to do that, I needed to enable a checkin policy for the unit test's team project using the version control API. I was a little surprised when it wasn't quite as obvious as I had hoped, and I had to poke around in the source to figure it out. So, I thought I'd post the code snippet. using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client; &nbs...

Visual Studio 4.0 SDK is now available (includes updates to TFS extensibility documentation)
The Visual Studio 4.0 SDK was released today. Here's the announcement. On behalf of the VS Tools Ecosystem team, we are pleased to announce that after months of hard work, we have completed shipping the VS SDK 4.0 RTM release! We have done tons of work to make this release friendly to developers who are new to Visual Studio extensibility. It is available for immediate download on the Microsoft Download Center. We are excited to present some of the new features included in this release: Here's what's new in it for TFS in particular. Team Foundation Server Extensibility tags: vs, v...

Orcas March CTP is available now and includes new Team Foundation Server
Here's the announcement. Please download the TFS Virtual PC image and let us know what you think. Except for build scheduling, this CTP contains all of the new Team Build features, including continuous integration. We are excited to announce that the Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” March 2007 CTP is now available publicly to all customers! This CTP is being released as both a Virtual PC (VPC) image and Installable Bits for both VSTS and TFS. If you wish to use the Virtual PC image you will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. You can use Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual PC ...

Schema for the WorkspaceMapping.xml file
The WorkspaceMapping.xml file is one of the files generated when creating a new build type. Those of you who've had to customize a build are probably familiar with the TfsBuild.proj file, which is the top-level file used to orchestrate the build.The WorkspaceMapping.xml file is used by one of the custom tasks to create the TFS workspace that contains the files to be built. In version 1 of Team Build, you must edit the WorkspaceMapping.xml file in order to change the mappings used by the workspace created for the build (in Orcas, you can do this in the GUI, and this file is no longer generated or used)...

Transcript from the Feb. 7 VSTS MSDN Chat
Below are highlights from the Feb. 7 VSTS MSDN Chat (the full transcript is attached to the bottom of this post). I hadn't participated in one in a quite a while. We got quite a few questions, and there were lots of folks from the product team on hand to answer the questions. Keep an eye out for the next one. General JManning (Expert):Q: Is there an SP2 expected between now and orcas?A: We have not announced any plans for a SP2 JManning (Expert):Q: Are there any plans to make VSTS work better in Vista limited user account mode? It seems like a step backwards to have to run as adm...

VSTS Webcasts: Licensing, development, TFS, and more
Adam Gallant is putting together a series of webcasts on VSTS topics, including one on licensing (licensing always seems to generate plenty of questions). The webcasts will occur over the next couple of months. His post has all of the details. New VSTS WebCasts... more...tags: vsts, visual studio team system, tfs, team foundation

Jeff Atwood’s Team Foundation Server Event Subscription Tool
Jeff has posted a nice GUI for creating event subscriptions. This tool makes the process less arcane and error prone. Check it out! Team Foundation Server Event Subscription Tool To set up advanced subscriptions, you needed to use bissubscribe.exe. This is problematic, because the command-line syntax is complicated, and also because bissubscribe.exe is only available on the Team Foundation Server. To address this deficiency Naren posted a GUI tool that lets you create Work Item Event Subscriptions in July 2006. I took that tool and modified it so that it supports all event subscriptions, along with a...