Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
Switching source control providers in VS prior to VS 2005
Back in 2003, Korby Parnell listed a couple of tools to switch source control providers. The interesting one was Sourcecode Control Switcher by Soenke Schau. It adds it self into the task tray to make switching providers really simple. I didn't try it, but it looks like it may be a good way to goAnother possibility is to create Windows shortcuts. Make a pair of batch scripts each containing one of the reg command lines that Ed Hintz posted. Then create Windows shortcuts to each batch script, perhaps on your desktop. Right click on each and choose Properties. In the Shortc...
How to perform a silent install of Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer
Aaron Stebner has a nice post showing the steps need to create uattended installations of Team Explorer (aka TFC, Team Foundation Client). How to perform a silent install of Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer I have previously posted instructions for performing a silent installation for Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions. A customer read those previous blog posts and asked a follow-up question about how to perform a silent installation of Visual Studio 2005 Team Explorer, which is the client software needed to access Team Foundation Server. Team Explorer setup is architected i...
TFS Alerts: From address and filtering
On internal mailing list, the following questions came up regarding the auto-generated check-in mails from TFS. Jeff Lucovsky replied with the following information, which I've edited slightly. In an earlier email, a similar question regarding work item tracking alerts came up. Does anyone know of a way to define rules to trigger automated email notifications when a certain field’s value in a work item is changed?Pete Sheill responded with the following. He's also got a related blog post on using bissubscribe.exe. There is a way to do it through a command line tool called BisSubscribe, which is a...
Problem with checking in from a Microsoft Content Management System solution
This has come up twice now, so it seems to be worth posting in the hopes that folks will find it when searching for the error message.Here's the scenario. Ben Ryan, a developer on version control, describes the problem and the workaround as follows. The root cause of the problem is that the CMS Service Pack that adds support for Visual Studio 2005 is built against a version of the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.dll assembly that is incompatible with the version we ship with other products (i.e. VSIP 7.1 and VSIP 8.0). Therefore, the IVsHierarchy that Microsoft.ContentManagement.DeveloperTo...
Updated MSSCCI Provider
[UPDATE April 8] The download page works now, and the link is now up to date.Brian Harry posted an announcement today that there is a new release of the MSSCCI provider for non-VS2005 environments. This one actually has signed binaries. ;-)Here's the summary from the download page. Overview The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that don't support Team Explorer integration. Instructions Download and run Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider.msi on a computer with one of the following products:
How to compare (diff) trees at different versions using the API
Recently the question of how to compare files and folders came up. TFS version 1 doesn't have the project difference type of functionality that was available in VSS. So if you want to write your own, this code sample will help you with the calls to get the information you'll want to display. The code shows two different approaches to getting the information. The first approach is to use the GetExtendedItem() method that Source Control Explorer uses to get much of its information (SCE also uses QueryPendingSets() to be able show the other users with pending changes on an item, but ...
Installing TFS, the short version
Jeff Atwood at Vertigo posted his version of Cliff's Notes for a Team System Install, including links to get the trial versions of everything required. If you aren't going to read the official guide, you might try his approach. I know no one reading this blog would take shortcuts...but just in case.Meanwhile, you can still get a Virtual PC image with the TFS release candidate from MSDN subscriber downloads. It's under Developers Tools | Visual Studio 2005 | English | Visual Studio Team Foundation Server | Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Trial Edition (English) | Vis...
How to detect whether Team Explorer is installed
On an internal list, the question of how to detect whether Team Explorer is installed came up. I didn't know the answer, and I figure there are others that would like to know this.To detect Team Explorer, look for the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftVisualStudio8.0InstalledProductsTeam Explorer with a DWORD entry called UseInterface having a value of 1.From the command line, you can use the reg command to query the registry.D:>reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftVisualStudio8.0InstalledProductsTeam Explorer" /v UseInterfaceHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftVisualStudio8.0Instal...
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