Buck Hodges

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)

Visual Studio Team Services - Buck Hodges

Gated checkin for Git: Using Branch Policies to run a build in VSTS and TFS

March 20, 2016 Mar 20, 2016 03/20/16
Buck Hodges
Let’s start with what gated checkin is, which is a feature we shipped as part of TFS 2010. Gated checkin enforces that a change in a branch builds and optionally passes tests (and anything else you want to do as part of your build) before it is checked in and available to everyone else in the branch. The gated checkin process we shipped ...

Git Credential Manager is now installed by Git for Windows

March 18, 2016 Mar 18, 2016 03/18/16
Buck Hodges
Beginning with version 2.7.3, Git for Windows includes the Git Credential Manager (GCM) that makes authenticating with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) a breeze with both Microsoft Accounts (MSAs fka LiveIDs) and Azure Active Directory (AAD) identities. Since GCM is installed by default, you’ll get prompted for credentials when running git...

Caching: What could go wrong?

August 11, 2015 Aug 11, 2015 08/11/15
Buck Hodges
There’s an old saying about regular expressions that I’ve always liked. I think it applies equally to caching. Here’s my version. Some people, when confronted with a performance problem, think “I know, I'll add a cache.” Now they have two problems. It’s so tempting to address a performance problem by adding a cache. After ...

NuGet packages for TFS and Visual Studio Online .NET client object model

August 10, 2015 Aug 10, 2015 08/10/15
Buck Hodges
For the past couple of releases we’ve released the Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Online client object model as a downloadable installer (aka MSI). Additionally, the license for it did not include the right to package it in an application for redistribution. As a result, it was inconvenient for builds and added friction for installing ...

Add, edit, rename, and delete files in the web browser with Visual Studio Online and TFS 2015

March 18, 2015 Mar 18, 2015 03/18/15
Buck Hodges
Back in the December 17th update, we added the ability to make changes to files in the web UI, and it works for both TFVC and Git. Edit is easy to find, since it’s right above the content on the screen. Add, rename, and delete are available through drop down menus. Let’s take a look at where those are. To add files, you need to click on ...

Moving TFS to cloud cadence and Visual Studio Online

February 27, 2015 Feb 27, 2015 02/27/15
Buck Hodges
We get quite a few questions from customers on how we made the transition to shipping both an on-premises product and a cloud service. We moved from shipping every 2-3 years to shipping Visual Studio Online every three weeks and TFS every 3-4 months. You’ve probably seen the great set of vignettes at Scaling Agile across the Enterprise. ...

Visual Studio Online reliability improvements

December 15, 2014 Dec 15, 2014 12/15/14
Buck Hodges
We’ve had a number of outages and other serious incidents in recent months. It’s clear we haven’t done enough to invest in reliability of the service, and I want to give you some insight into what we are working on that will be coming in January and beyond. First I want to give you a very brief description of the the Visual ...