Buck Hodges
Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)
Latest posts
DIY: Running TFS using a named instance in SQL
The question about using a named instance with TFS has come up several times, and it came up again today on an internal mailing list. As to why we don't support it in V1, Brian Harry states that it was the time to get it into setup and the additional testing that led to the decision to postpone it to a future version.However, for those of you who want to try it, there is a "do it yourself" approach. Bill Essary posted the outline of how to do it in the following forum post. I've copied the answer below, and added some links to the TFS admin utilities and SQL docs. Keep in mind this is...
Using Outlook with RPC over HTTP is great
Not too long ago, I finally got around to configuring Outlook to use RPC over HTTP on my laptop and my desktop at home so that I can get to my work email more conveniently. I love this feature and wish I had done it a lot sooner. Outlook Web Access is great for places where you don't have your own computer, but it's not the same as the full Outlook.If you use Outlook, give it a try. If you work at Microsoft, you can find the instructions on the lower left of the Outlook Web Access front page.
Licensing differences between TFS Workgroup Edition and TFS Standard Edition
Recently Ajay Sudan, Product Manager for VSTS, answered a question regarding some confusion over the differences between TFS Workgroup Edition and TFS Standard Edition. Here is how he summed it up. TFS Workgroup Edition is not licensed on a Server/CAL model. This means CALs are not required when using the Workgroup Edition. For this reason, the Workgroup Edition does not include any CALs. TFS Workgroup Edition can be used by 5 unique users using any client (MSSCCI, 3rd party client, VS Pro, Team Edition, Project, Excel, etc.). Once you grow beyond 5 users, you’ll need to upgrade to TFS Standard Editio...
TFS standby application tier and database clustering
Keith Hill had seen mention of a standby application tier in the slides I posted and asked for more information. I sent email to Bill Essary, and he replied with the following links covering server availability.Ensuring Team Foundation Server AvailabilityYou can control when you take the servers offline for maintenance. However, you must also consider how you want to handle unexpected failures. By applying one of three basic strategies, you can make sure that the servers are available to the clients during maintenance or failures. The strategy you select is determined by the amount of down-time the users ca...
Update on the TFS source control provider for applications other than VS 2005 (MSSCCI provider)
Brian Harry has posted an update on the status of the TFS source control provider. It's currently scheduled for release the week of April 3rd.Here is the list of applications tested. There are more applications that support the MSSCCI provider model than we have resources to test, so he also requests your help in reporting issues with other applications. Check out his post for more information.
How to move your Team Foundation Server
There is now draft documentation available that describes how to move a TFS server.Moving Your Team Foundation Server Deployment
Slides from a TFS version control presentation
Yesterday, Ed Hintz and I gave a "brown bag" presentation in Redmond for some internal groups that will begin using TFS. I've created a public version of the slides and attached it to this post. The presentation goes over a few concepts (the intended audience is already quite familiar with source control), shows some common operations with the command line, gives an overview of how to write tools that use version control, both using the client API as well as VS add-ins, and introduces the command available in tfpt.exe. TFSCCBrownBag-public.ppt
How to check in changes on behalf of other users
Recently someone asked how to check in changes for another user. There are at least two good scenarios where this is needed. One is for check-in systems such as the Gauntlet system we used internally during the development of TFS. Rather than check in directly, developers would shelve their changes and put them in the Gauntlet queue. Gauntlet would unshelve one shelveset's worth of changes, build the code with those changes, run a small set of tests, and then check in the changes on behalf of the user who created the shelveset.Another important scenario is for converting an existing system...
How to validate check-in policies, evaluate check-in notes, and check for conflicts
In the version control API, the CheckIn() method does not evaluate check-in policies and validate check-in notes. It provides with the ability to supply both an override comment and check-in notes, as applicable, but the evaluation and validation must have been performed prior to calling CheckIn(). The reason for this is that in a real-world application, you will evaluate check-in policies and validate check-in notes at points in time that make sense for whatever you are writing. For example, the Visual Studio environment will evaluate check-in policies when certain events are triggered.&nb...