Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
What do you want in the way of power toy checkin policies?
Mario Rodriguez, a program manager on TFS version control, is seeking your input on what you need in the way of checkin policies for a future power toys release. An example might be a policy that wraps another policy to provide path filtering to more precisely control what files are subject to a particular checkin policy.Please leave a comment on his blog post. Check-In Policies Pack Feedback Request I have decided to skip the post about merge and deleted items for today in order to get some feedback from you on Check-in Policies. Currently, we are thinking of releasing a check-in policy pack out ...
Getting web sites precompiled with Team Build
Aaron Hallberg wrote a great post explaining how to build precompiled web sites with Team Build. The problem is that building them does not, by default, produce precompiled websites where all of the code is in dlls and removed from the ASP.NET source files. Team Build and aspnet_compiler.exe ... Because Team Build typically compiles solutions and not projects, an additional complication is introduced with website projects. By default, these projects have the -u option selected for their compilation in their solution property pages. With this option turned on, aspnet_compiler.exe keeps marku...
How to handle “The path X is already mapped in workspace Y”
This has come up before on the forums, but I don't think I've ever posted about it here. Today I saw a reference to the TFS Workspace Gotcha! post in today's Team System Rocks VSTS Links roundup. There's a command to deal with the problem, but it's not obvious.Here's the post. I have been working with a team that has recently migrated a TFS source project from a trail TFS to a full production server (different server). They disconnected their solution from source control (removes all the SCC stuff from .sln) files and then tried to add to the new TFS. However, they were getting weird errors...
Sample reports that use the TFS reporting feature
If you are interested in the TFS reporting feature, you may want to check out the sample reports in the zip file attached to the following blog post. Sample Team System Reports This attachment contains a variety of samples, experiments and untested reports for use with the Team Foundation Data warehouse. There is a brief overview document describing the reports and how to deploy them. zip file: TFS Reporting Samples.zipHere's what you'll find in the zip file. If you have any questions or have feedback for the team, be sure to post in the MSDN TFS Reporting Forum. C:msdownTFS+Reporting+Samples>tree /FFold...
TFS API documentation is now on the MSDN web site
Rob Caron mentioned that the SDK documentation is now on the MSDN web site. That SDK documentation includes the Team Foundation Server API documentation. Last year I pointed out where to find the version control documentation in the massive download that is the VS SDK, but you don't need to do that now.So, the good news is that the documentation that we have is much more accessible. The bad news is that it's still pretty thin. Folks are working on that, but it's going to take time -- the API is pretty large.Version Control APIHere are some pointers to some key classes for version control, ...
More power: New power toy release (tfpt) includes VSS-style project difference!
[UPDATE 8/9/07] I fixed the broken link to the power tools page.Brian Harry announced the latest release of the Team Foundation Power Toys in the post, New TFS Power Toys Available!. In his post he gives a quick description of each of the new commands and the major enhancements.One of the most important aspects of this release is that tfpt is no longer buried in a 300 MB download. Here's the new slim and trim 1 MB download: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5422499. That's a 300-fold improvement! Don't expect that kind of improvement in the next release. ;-)After you install the ...
TFS tools on CodePlex
I ran two searches on CodePlex to see what folks are developing for TFS. One search was for "TFS" and the other was for "Team Foundation," which I hope would be enough to catch them all. The second search only yielded one additional project (Time Tracker).It's always cool to see what folks come up with. Highly-motivated individuals and groups can extend TFS in really meaningful ways. If you start a project for TFS, contact me when you have a usable release, and I'll mention it in a post.The one highlighted in bold have useful releases that you can download today. TFS Code R...
Filtering the builds listed in work item tracking
As soon as folks start using Team Build, especially with some sort of continuous integration support, several issues pop up regarding the integration with work item tracking, including how not to have bad builds listed and how not to have every build from every build type listed.When TFS is installed, work item tracking adds a subscription, via bissubscribe.exe, to receive all build completion events. Builds are listed in the "found in" and "fixed in" fields in work item forms. Since there is no filtering, every single completed build is added to the list of builds.Jason Prickett, a developer wor...
Writing custom loggers for use with Team Build
If you you're interested in adding a custom logger to your build process in Team Build, Aaron walks you through the steps you need to know. Adding Custom Loggers to Team Build Yesterday we looked at using tasks to add customized build steps during a build. Today I'd like to show you how to add a customized logger.