Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Using an SMTP server that requires authentication
Bill Essary provided the following as a work around for using a Team Foundation Server email notifications with an SMTP server that requires a user name and password. TFS does not directly support using a username and password to connect to an SMTP server but it is possible to work around this limitation by using an SMTP virtual server on the TFS AT. That virtual SMTP server can be configured to provide the authentication credentials that the “real” SMTP server needs when relaying messages. Please consult the following links for more details: As mentioned in the MSDN forum thread, Pete Sh...
Using the version control caching proxy server to speed up get
I've written about our experiences using the version control caching proxy server before, but I thought I'd post a screenshot that nicely shows the difference in bandwidth utilization. Before I do that, we were recently having a serious problem with our local caching proxy server being slow and sometimes not responding. Robert Horvick looked into it and figured out that the problem was caused by the NIC setting on the computer being incorrect. Yet again, we were bitten by the NIC setting not matching the network switch setting. Not surprisingly, the performance was phenomenally better....
Removing the Team Foundation Server association in Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel files
Here's a handy tip if you find yourself needing to disassociate or unbind a Microsoft Project (.mpp) or Microsoft Excel (.xls) file from a Team Foundation Server, perhaps because you changed the name of the server, the server no longer exists, etc.Microsoft ProjectYogita Manghnani, a PM for TFS, posted the following process in the Team Foundation Server MSDN forum. Microsoft ExcelDennis Habib, a developer for TFS, provides the following process. Since this involves editing the registry, all of the usual caveats apply.
Team Foundation Server and CodePlex
If you haven't seen CodePlex, you'll want to check it out. It's Microsoft's shared community development web site, and it uses TFS to host development projects. Brad Wilson of the CodePlex team provides some nice answers to about 10 questions of general interest on TFS and CodePlex. Answering Questions About CodePlex and TFS Phil Haack has some questions about CodePlex and our use of Team Foundation Server that I'd like to answer. Note that I'm not trying to convince Phil to use CodePlex; rather, I want to clarify answers to his questions so that he and others can make the best decisions on their own....
Visual SourceSafe Sharing in Team Foundation Server Version Control
Lots of folks have asked for sharing in TFS version control. While we don't support it and don't encourage it as a best practice, Rob Caron mentioned that Component Software has produced an application called TFSLinks that adds sharing functionality to TFS. For those of you who can't live without VSS-style sharing, you might want to give it a try. The TFSLinks product maintains the relations between shared files and automatically updates all instances whenever a new revision is checked-in to any copy of the shared file. Shared files may be imported from your original VSS projects, or defined manually...
Quick guide to backing up your TFS databases
Jeff Atwood at Verigo Software has posted a nice visual guide to backing up your TFS data (based on the official MSDN TFS backup documentation).A Visual Guide to Backing Up a Team Foundation Server databaseHe promises to provide a guide to restoring the data as well.
Using TFS with Web Application Projects
There's a helpful FAQ posted in the ASP.NET forums regarding using Team Foundation Server with the newly released Web Application Projects for Visual Studio.Issue 6 - Using TFS Team Build Issue 6 - Using TFS Team BuildThe May 2006 release of Web Application Projects supports building with Team Build on a Team Foundation Server (TFS). However, you will need to manually add the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file to your Team Foundation Server for it to work. After performing these steps Team Build should be able to successfully build a web-project build with the new Web Application Project type. A...
Editing documents anywhere using Outlook free documents
About a month ago, I wrote about using Outlook with RPC over HTTP. I recently stumbled across an old blog post by Jeremy Kelly called Using your Mailbox to Store Work-in-Progress documents. He mentions a feature called "free docs." Combining this with Outlook over HTTP is really very useful. Here's how it works. What's so cool about that? It's a secure way to be able to work on your documents wherever you have Outlook over HTTP (office desktop, laptop elsewhere), the file is updated in place, automatically synchronized (no more searching for the latest version), and backed up...
Compare the content changes in a shelveset with any checked-in version
I wrote this snippet recently to compare the edited files in a shelveset with an arbitrary checked-in version of the same files. It's another example of how to use the API to show differences. See How to compare (diff) trees at different versions using the API for a different example of comparing checked-in files.If you are just getting started with the version control API, you'll want to start with the basic example.using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Text; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFound...