19 Jul 2007

Vista Sidebar Gadget for Team Builds

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
Jim Lamb has released a Windows Sidebar Gadget that allows you to view completed and failed team builds.  The current version is compatible with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 (i.e. "Orcas") and should also be compatible with beta 2 once it's released. You can read more about it and/or download the gadget here.  Jim also provides a short video demonstration of the gadget on his blog page as well.
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17 Jul 2007

Refreshing TFS Version Control Status Icons

Visual Studio
I've seen a some posts lately related to the version control status icons that are displayed in the Solution Explorer within Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  The problem with these status icons is that they do not automatically update to reflect the current status when a file is checked out or back in.  Even refreshing the Solution Explorer does not refresh the status icons.  To see this in action, open a solution in Visual Studio and have someone else check one of the solution files out.  Refresh your Solution Explorer by right-clicking on a project and selecting Refresh. There is…
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11 Jul 2007

Microsoft’s Largest Launch – Ever!

Orcas, Visual Studio
Microsoft announces today (July 10th) that Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 (formerly code-named "Orcas") will be officially launched together on February 27th, 2008.  Although it appears that Visual Studio 2008 is still set for release later this year, I have to say I'm a little surprised (although not too much) by the release date.  I had the impression these tools would be available a little sooner than this since the 2007 PDC in Los Angeles was canceled with this message: We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the…
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07 Jul 2007

Installing Service Pack 1 for TFS and VSTS

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
Although Service Pack 1 for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2005 has been out for a while now, the installation process is not necessarily obvious.  Depending upon your configuration, there may be one or more files you need to install - and the order can matter. Team Foundation Server: If you're running Windows Server 2003, there may be issues when attempting to install large MSI files (the Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 is over 400MB).  See knowledge base article KB925336 for more information as well as a downloadable update to resolve this issue.  Install this update first if…
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21 Jun 2007

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Includes "Go-Live" License

Orcas, Visual Studio
I noticed in a blog post by Scott Guthrie that Visual Studio 2008 (formerly known as "Orcas") will include a "go-live" license allowing it to be put into production use with a supported upgrade path to subsequent releases. VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2 will ship later this summer, and the Beta 2 release will support a go-live license for those who want to put applications into production using the new features immediately. Also, just in case you missed it, "Orcas" is now officially known as Visual Studio 2008 and the related .NET Framework is known as .NET Framework 3.5. …
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06 Apr 2007

Updated Team Foundation Server Roadmap for "Orcas"

Orcas, TFS, Visual Studio
Brian Harry has just published a new post detailing the future "Orcas" release of Team Foundation Server. The post is fairly detailed and he attempts to point out what features are new as well as what will be in the Beta 1 release vs. the Beta 2 release.The features marked as new include:TFS Best Practices Analyzer - A tool that can be run against your TFS server that will help diagnose configuration errors and tuning possibilities.VSTS Web Access - There's been much written about this already but the new Web Access product from devBiz will be released as a Power…
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07 Mar 2007

VS 2005 SP 1 Update for Windows Vista Released

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio
If you've been developing on Windows Vista using Visual Studio 2005 then you've no doubt become all too familiar with the warning dialog that pops up every time you start Visual Studio (assuming you haven't disabled it). This dialog lets you know that your version of Visual Studio may not work as excepted while developing on Vista and that you should install the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista.Since the release of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, this update was available only as a beta release. Microsoft has now released the non-beta version of this…
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02 Mar 2007

New Orcas Features

Orcas, Visual Studio
Eric Lee has a nice post on some of the new features found in the current Orcas release. There is some really nice stuff coming out with Orcas, especially in the area of Team Foundation Server. Some of these features include:Code Metrics - view various metrics about your source code.Annotation View for Files under Version Control - lets you see who changed what & when?Team Foundation Server Build Definition Editor - quit messing around in all that XML!Build Retention Policy - automatically remove build files from your drop location.Continuous Builds - finally! :-)Build Queues - lets you queue up builds.Folder…
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15 Dec 2006

Visual Studio 2005/TFS Service Pack 1 Released

TFS, Visual Studio
As announced on Soma's blog, Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server has been released.This Service Pack addresses a range of issues that were found through customer and partner feedback as well as our own internal testing. Many of these issues were reported by you and I thank you for taking the time to report them to us. The release also adds a number of customer requested functionality and enhancements to some of the most common development scenarios to Visual Studio that I think you’ll find interesting and valuable.You can find the full details here.
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09 Nov 2006

VS 2005 Add-In for Collapsing Solution Projects

Add-ins & Extensions, Visual Studio
Recently, I've started experimenting with the capabilities of add-ins for VS 2005 because I want to write some extensions for Team Foundation Server. However, before I could really get to work on the more complex add-ins I needed to start with something simple.For anyone who has ever worked with Visual Studio 2005 solutions that contains multiple projects, you've probably spent a fair amount of time collapsing the project items in the Solution Explorer. So, my first "useful" add-in simply allows you to collapse all solution project items with a single mouse click.After you install this add-in and run Visual Studio…
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