Below are highlights from the Feb. 7 VSTS MSDN Chat (the full transcript is attached to the bottom of this post).  I hadn’t participated in one in a quite a while.  We got quite a few questions, and there were lots of folks from the product team on hand to answer the questions.  Keep an eye out for the next one.

General

JManning (Expert):
Q: Is there an SP2 expected between now and orcas?
A: We have not announced any plans for a SP2

JManning (Expert):
Q: Are there any plans to make VSTS work better in Vista limited user account mode?  It seems like a step backwards to have to run as admin.
A: We’re working on a GDR to improve this with Vista, but some scenarios (like debugging) may still require admin privs.

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: I tried to install SP1 for VSTS, there is some issues with it, it was waiting a lot of time and I got error. Are there any reccomendations for it?
A: SP1 for VS2005 requires a lot of disk space and a good deal of time to patch.  Make sure you have the recommended amount of space available on disk and be patient with the installer.  If you still have problems, you can try posting the error for more help on our MSDN Forums (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=26&SiteID=1).

Architect

MarkG_MS (Expert):
Q: what are the most importand changes in the team architect edition?
A: For the Orcas release we have focused on updating the system designer to enable a more top-down approach to design.

MarkG_MS (Expert):
Q: How can I use VSTS Architect edition to build WCF Application Diagram? Currently VSTS 2005 allows you to build Application Diagram for Web Services, but there is not support for WCF. Are you planing to add it in Orcas?
A: We currently do not support WCF natively within Team Architect of Orcas.  There is a forum post explaining what can be done.  <http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1112621&SiteID=1>  Also the P&P Software Factories are where we are planning on supporting WCF code generation.   

MarkG_MS (Expert):
Q:  A: “We are also focusing on enabling WCF throught the P&P software factories”… how? are the gat and gax integrated in orcas?
A: We are currently not planning on a in the box integration with GAT/GAX in the Orcas time frame, but we are taking feedback on this currently.

MarkG_MS (Expert):
Q: A question about VSTA -is there a way to design a distributed system connected by .NET Remoting instead of Web Services?  Maybe this will be possible in Orcas?
A: We do not have plans to have a .Net Remoting endpoint within Team Architect.  You can use the SDM SDK that ships within the VS SDK, to create your own endpoint types, you will not be able to generate code from that at this time. 

Team Developer

Ian Huff – MSFT (Expert):
Q: Will the profiler be improved to support line level profiling in the next release?
A: So this is a common request that we’ve gotten. We are working on this feature so keep on this lookout for it in a future CTP or Beta.

DavidKean_MS (Moderator):
Q: any ETA for a FxCop SDK ?
A: I assume you mean a supported, documented and stable API? Unfortunately, there is no currently plan in the Orcas timeframe to make this a supported scenario; it will remain an off-road experience. Is this something you see as important? What kind of rules do you write?

DavidKean_MS (Moderator):
Q: For Code Analysis, will future releases have more rules included?  For example, I think there are items in Framework Design Guidelines that are not currently checked that we would love to see (without doing it ourselves ;)?
A: Of course, we have some great new analysis coming on board. You will see more analysis around Exception throwing (especially those covered in the following post: http://blogs.msdn.com/fxcop/archive/2007/02/01/how-to-design-exception-hierarchies.aspx), and naming (see http://blogs.msdn.com/fxcop/archive/2007/01/12/january-orcas-ctp-released.aspx). We will also be adding more maintainability rules. We also have a completely new feature coming on board, unfortunately, it’s too early to talk about it, but keep an eye out on the FxCop blog and the next CTP.

Team Test

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: Any plans on enabling functionality in other versions besides Tester to create test lists?  IMO, this should be in developer as well.
A: You should see editing of test lists enabled in Team Developer Edition in the most recent CTP of Orcas.

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: I think I didn’t send the question correctly, I have the same problem as in this post http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1153014&SiteID=1. I need to deploy test cases data that is not being copied when run from Team Build
A: To clarify, you specify files to deploy with your tests in the test run config file which work when run in the IDE, but those files aren’t being deployed when run via Team Build?  Running tests from Team Build is similar to running them from the command-line with MSTest.  You must specify the test run config file.  I’m looking for the documentation on how to specify that in Team Build and I will follow up in your MSDN Forum post.

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: What are plans for test case management in VSTT? Currently it seems like there is not test case work item so all tests have to be unit tests, generic tests, webtests, etc.?
A: We are focusing heavily on bringing a whole TCM solution to VSTS after Orcas.  Currently (VS2005) test case management is only possible at the VS solution-level and does not have any information stored in TFS.

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: Follow-up on VSTT, will there be a new work item type for test cases?
A: We are aiming at TFS project-level TCM, so yes we’ll leverage TFS but I can’t comment on implementation yet.

drwill_MS (Expert):
Q: Why are the .trx files that get spit out when running tests so huge? Any plans to change the format there to make them more parseable?
A: The test results file (.trx) has a lot of information about the test.  The more tests you have, especially tests that output a lot of info, will make the file large.  Part of the bloat is due to the XML format.  We are addressing the file format in Orcas to be more easily parsable.  You should see the changes in the next CTP.

Team Data

DmitriyN (Expert):
Q: Why the reason to make the database profession a different SKU all together?  Developers could leverage the same functionality that it provides.  Why the seperation?  Any plans on merging the features into the overall product?  I think it would be good.
A: We will be integrating with Visual Studio Team System in Orcas, and we will continue to have a stand-alone product. So, the complete Orcas VS Team Suite will contain VS Team Edition for Database Professionals in it.

Mairead – MSFT (Expert):
Q: Any chance that you will be implementing better GUI/wizards into Data Dude to ease script writing?
A: Can you elaborate on what type of script you would like a wizard for? Importing or exporting?

DmitriyN (Expert):
Q: DB Professional Q : when will you add the DB InteliSence inside of Team Suit?
A: We are investigating this functionality for the next full release of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals

StevenPo_MSFT (Expert):
Q: DB Pro: I’d like to suppress individual warnings like you can with Code Analysis if you don’t find that warning important in that SP for instance not every instance of a warning because it could be important elsewhere.
A: Unfortunately, this is not currently a supported feature. I would suggest that you log your suggestion at http://connect.microsoft.com. You could then post a note about your suggestion in our forums, with a link to it, so that other users can vote on the feature suggestion. That helps us prioritize requests such as this one when we are planning subsequent releases.

Team Foundation

SmithaS – MS (Expert):
Q: Writing reports in Team Foundation System is not exactly straightforward.  Can you give some guidance to tutorials for getting off the ground?
A: If you are new to reports then creating new reports requires some learning time. You will need to get familiar with at least one of the tools that are available to create reports. One of them is Report Designer and you can find documentation for it here: <http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155805.aspx>.

JManning (Expert):
Q: We have a lot of VB6 source code files in VSS and we want to migrate to TFS Source Control. We are facing the following problems: 1. How to deal with all the shared files in VSS? the branch/merge mechanism is not a good solution for us.
A: Branch and merge are the mechanisms we recommend when you had been using shared files in VSS – it’s definitely a transition of process, but we feel it works well – you may want to check out this post – http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2004/06/14/155403.aspx

jim_boyle_MSFT (Expert):
Q: We need to integrate teams from outside our company.  This was a problem in first realaese of TFS.  Has this been addressed?
A: SP1 for Team Foundation Server includes the Extranet feature which may address this

Buck Hodges MS (Expert):
Q: Are there any enhancements to the Team Project Alerts for Orcas like specifying a directory on which you want to be alerted (instead of the whole project). I know about Bissubscribe but haven’t had much luck with that tool.
A: There aren’t any new GUI tools in Orcas, unfortunately.

John Morris MS (Expert):
Q: Are there any plans to add DB maintenance features into TFS?  I can’t keep telling my company that the hardware requirements for the TFS database includes adding new hard drives every time the current ones get full.
A: We planning on adding more administrative support in a future release. To some extent, you can SQL Server Management Studio to do some database maintenance. Did you have activities in mind?

JManning (Expert):
Q: Will TFS server renaming be better supported in the next release? It’s currently such an ordeal and I haven’t yet gotten it to work properly.
A: Yes, we’re hoping to make it less manual steps for doing operations like this in future versions.

Matt Mitrik – MSFT (Expert):
Q: Hi. How is it going with migration tool from Rational ClearCase to TFS Version Control? Any progress? Any dates?
A: We’re currently working on several conversion/synchronization tools, and the Rational ClearCase to TFS tool is one of our highest priorities.  We don’t have any release date at this time.

Doug_Neumann_ms (Expert):
Q: Do you have any good documentation on how to define areas and iterations ()best practices in TFS?
A: You should use the iterations to represent the timeline breakdown of your team project.  You might use the top level of the hierarchy to represent specific releases.  The next level would represent development iterations or milestones within that release.  The level below that would decompose those iterations to represent intermediate checkpoints.  As for the area path, the suggestion is to use that as the functional breakdown of your application.  That decomposition depends largely on how your app is structured, but to use Microsoft Office as an example, the top level would likely be something like Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, Project, etc.  The next level under Word would likely be something like Editing, Printing, Templates, etc.  Under editing, you might have formatting, which would likely include text formatting, which might include the Font dialog.  Make sense?

Team Build

Buck Hodges MS (Expert):
Q: Will you be creating any support for building legacy (VB6, VC++ 6.0) projects to TFS Build?
A: No, we don’t have anything new planned.

Buck Hodges MS (Expert):
Q: Team Build related question. What about (in a single team build compiling 2 solutions) perform a custom action (a target) between 1st solution compile and 2nd solution compile? thanks
A: There’s no simple way to do that in v1.  There were some approaches discussed in the MSDN forum.  For Orcas, we’ve addressed this issue and made it easy.

Buck Hodges MS (Expert):
Q: Will Continous Integration builds in Orcas be as straight forward to create as CI builds using CruiseControl.NET?  We briefly toyed with TeamBuild in the current version but it seemed a bit, uh, obtuse to us.  So we stuck with our own build infrastructure.
A: Yes, it gets first class support.  Here’s a pointer to the spec: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/01/06/orcas-team-build-continuous-integration-spec-is-now-available.aspx.  Here’s a link with more detail on other changes in Team Build for Orcas: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2006/12/02/more-on-the-orcas-features-for-team-build.aspx

Buck Hodges MS (Expert):
Q: Any plans for (out of the box) integration between Sandcastle and TFS build?
A: We haven’t talked about in-the-box support, but we’ll add it to the list of things to consider for the next release.  You may already be familiar with what’s out there now, but here’s a pointer to some possible solutions now: http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2007/02/03/generating-documentation-from-code-with-team-build.aspx

tags: vsts, visual studio team system, tfs, team foundation

Team System Chat Transcript.doc