Effective Thoughts

Recently, I had the pleasure of co-presenting (probably generous...I more just rode shotgun :) on VSTS 2010: Architecture Edition with Randy Pagels , Developer Platform Technical Specialist with Microsoft. We spoke to an impressively-attended internal user group at Cincinnati Financial . Thank you Randy for the invitation to co-present and Cincinnati Financial for having us in. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the current 2008 Architecture Edition. Too rigid. Doesn't roll with the punches very well. It's more of a lay-down-the-law boundaries at the beginning of the project without the flexibility of absorbing feedback and instituting ongoing, evolutionary change. The new version seems much more flexible and functional. It imposes a model / architecture but can be (and expects to be) adjusted easily over the life of the project. One can also institute a confirmation check of the code against the model during the automated build. It's less overbearing and more of a qua...

This is a frequent topic of conversation with friends visiting Chicago. I lived there for 8 years and loved Chicago...well, except for the October to May winters. Chicago has great sports, culture, festivals, events, shopping and...of course food. So I can avoid regurgitating this list every time I'm asked, here we go: Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinders (Pizza in a bowl...owner remembers wait list by your face) Cafe Babareeba (Spanish tapas) Giordano's (deep dish pizza; pass on Gino's...no where near as good) Portillo's (Loaded dogs) Joe's (get the Stone Crab if it's in season) Mon Ami Gabi (French) Tizi Melloul (Mediterranean) Mia Francesca's (Italian) Star of Siam (Tai) Mitchell's (breakfast) I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that's a good start. Enjoy!

I'm sure I missed a step somewhere during setup but...so the search engines catch 'em, I'm going to post my TFS/VSTS 2010 setup missteps below: Issue : "TF255147: The following server that is running SQL Server is not listening on the expected TCP port: SERVER" Resolution : Open SQL Server Configuration Manager. Under SQL Server Network Configuration, Protocols for MSSQLSERVER, right-mouse Enable TCP/IP. Restart SQL Server. Re-run TFS configuration wizard. Issue : "TF255282: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cannot be installed. The program is already installed on this server" Resolution : Open up Add/Remove Programs (or "Programs and Features" under Win2k8 Server) and remove Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Re-run TFS configuration wizard. Issue : Couldn't get Full-Text search within SQL 2008 to install. MSI (s) (14:AC) [00:03:21:091]: Source is incorrect. Unable to open or validate MSI package D:\Setup\sql_engine_core_shared.msi.M...

By default, Team Build (MSBuild-driven) wants to output compiled assets (assemblies, config, exe's, etc.) to a flattened ..\Binaries\Release|Debug directory. I had a client desiring to package up these assets in their relative, normal output directories into an MSI using WiX. Fortunately, there's a simple directive to set within the TFSBuild.proj file such that the individual project OutDir is honored: true Set this within the main PropertyGroup element for your build. Unless you're performing a custom check-out, you'll also need to turn off read-only attributes set during the Get from version control. Update this attribute in the AfterGet target using an Exec task:

Thanks for everyone attending my " Implementing an Agile Software Development Process with Team Foundation Server (TFS) " presentation today. We enjoyed some good discussion. I had a few TFS-related questions pop up which I thought I'd address in a post: Q. Is it possible to fail the build but only if a specific test fails? So, let's say we have 3 tests. If Test01 or Test02 fail, fail the build. If Test03 fails, don't fail the build. A. Not that I'm aware of. If any test fails in a build but compilation succeeded, that build lists a state of Partially Succeeded. With TFS 2008 SP1, we received a property to modify or control this behavior: TreatTestFailureAsBuildFailure. If true (false is the default), any test failure will set the build state to Failed (vs. Partially Succeeded). Nice write-up here . You might take the approach of creating two separate builds: one that contains all your tests and one containing just mission critical tests. Set TreatTestFailureA...

Rhut roe, Raggie. You just checked in a merge operation affecting 100's of files in TFS against the wrong branch. Ooops. Well, you can simply roll it back, right? Select the folder in Source Control Explorer and...hey, where's the Rollback? Rollback isn't supported in TFS natively. However, it is supported within the Power Tools leveraging the command-line TFPT.exe utility. It's fairly straightforward to revert back to a previous version--with one caveot. First, download and install the Team Foundation Power Tools 2008 on your workstation. Before proceeding, let's create a workspace dedicated to the rollback. To "true up" the workspace, the rollback operation will peform a Get Latest for every file in your current workspace. This can consume hours (and many GB) with a broad workspace mapping. To work around this, I create a temporary workspace targeted at just the area of source I need to roll back. So let's drill down on our scenario... I'm worki...

I finally found some time to get rolling on VSTS/TFS 2010 and wanted to share how I kitted out my environment. Somewhat related, fantastic overview on where to start . Started with my Windows 2008 Server VPC Installed and configured IIS 7 Downloaded and installed the SQL Server 2008 180-day Trial Configured SQL Server 2008 and SSRS, SSAS Turned off IE Enhanced Security for Administrators Under Win7 Beta1 (my host OS), I have a jerky mouse on the VPC . Unfortunately, the Change settings button under the Troubleshoot tab of my display driver is disabled under 64-bit :( Otherwise, I would enable the hardware acceleration recommendation. It's slightly better under full-screen. Downloaded and installed Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3.0 . Downloaded and installed TFS 2010 Beta 1 following the instructions to the letter. Downloaded and installed VSTS 2010 Beta 1 . Happy exploring and learning!