Buck Hodges

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)

Team Build - Buck Hodges

VS 2010 SP1 crashes when viewing build on a TFS 2008 server

March 23, 2011 Mar 23, 2011 03/23/11
Buck Hodges
Unfortunately, we introduced a regression into Visual Studio 2010 SP1 in the process of fixing a performance issue in the build details view that a number of customers had reported (viewing the log was really slow for larger builds). We made this change late in SP1. I apologize for the inconvenience. I want to make sure you know about that ...

The book to buy on team build: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build, Second Edition

February 13, 2011 Feb 13, 2011 02/13/11
Buck Hodges
If you are responsible for work with your team’s build system, you will definitely want to buy a copy of Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build (Second Edition).  Both of the authors now work for Microsoft.  William Bartholomew is part of the central engineering team and has been building the ...

Web projects and team build

February 12, 2011 Feb 12, 2011 02/12/11
Buck Hodges
Vishal Joshi, lead program manager for web platform tools, has a great blog covering using various project types with Team Foundation Build.  Here’s a selection of his posts on using team build, which I highly recommend if you are working with web projects. Technorati Tags: team foundation,build,web projects,team ...

Code metrics command line tool

January 29, 2011 Jan 29, 2011 01/29/11
Buck Hodges
[UPDATE 3/24/12]  You can find a real code metrics activity here as part of the Community TFS Build Extensions. Cameron Skinner has announced a new command line tool for generating code metrics.  We’ve long gotten requests to be able to generate code metrics from the build.  Prior to this tool, code ...

How to use the MSBuild debugger in Visual Studio 2010

July 17, 2010 Jul 17, 2010 07/17/10
Buck Hodges
Dan Moseley, dev lead for msbuild, wrote a debugger for msbuild while on leave(!) back during the 2010 cycle.  While it ultimately couldn’t be fully completed and tested to be an official feature, it is in the product with a switch to enable it (it’s off by default).  This was a conscious decision made by the VS team, and...

Building .NET 4.0 Apps with Team Foundation Build 2008

November 4, 2009 Nov 4, 2009 11/4/09
Buck Hodges
William Bartholomew, former VSTS MVP and author of the book Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build, recently joined Microsoft.  He's written a great post on the handful of steps you need to follow if you want to build .NET 4.0 applications with TFS 2008:  Building .NET 4.0 Applications Using Team ...

Using Test Impact in VSTS 2010

July 30, 2009 Jul 30, 2009 07/30/09
Buck Hodges
Dennis Stone, a tester on Team Test, has posted a great walkthrough of using the new test impact feature of 2010.  If you aren't familiar with test impact, it's a feature that tells you which tests execute the code you've changed in a checkin.  Rather than run all of the tests, you can run only the tests that test the code you ...

Debug your build with MSBuild Sidekick v2.3

March 30, 2009 Mar 30, 2009 03/30/09
Buck Hodges
The folks at Attrice have released a new version of their MSBuild Sidekick, and it now includes a visual debugger for msbuild.  If you've ever tried to debug a build process, you know how tedious it can be and will want to check this out. MSBuild Sidekick v 2.3 is released We are happy to announce the release of version 2.3 of ...