29 Jun 2010

Visual Studio 2010 VM and Hands-on-Labs

TFS, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
Brian Keller recently posted the availability of the new Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs. This virtual machine (VM) includes Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and a sample application along with sample data which supports 9 hands-on-labs. This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). This is a great download for anyone…
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27 Jun 2010

Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance

Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have just released the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance.  Here is the description of the guidance: Practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, focused on modeling tools. This release includes common usage scenarios, hands on labs and lessons learned from community discussions. The scenarios include understanding and reverse engineering an existing solution or starting a new solution from scratch. These are both common challenges that any dev lead or architect faces. The intent is not to give you an in-depth tour of the product features, but to present you with examples that show how…
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14 May 2010

Check for Warnings/Errors Check-in Policy

Check-in Policies, TFS, Visual Studio 2010
A while back, I wrote about the Check for Warnings/Errors Check-in Policy – a custom check-in policy that I had developed for Team Foundation Server 2008.  Yesterday, I published version 2.1, updated for Team Foundation Server 2010, to the Visual Studio Gallery.  The features are the same as the TFS 2008 version with a couple of exceptions: You now have the ability to restrict the set of warnings to Code Contract warnings only. The settings for the check-in policy are now stored as TFS properties (more on this in an upcoming post). Here are the details… Usage: To add this…
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21 Apr 2010

Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 Utility Roundup

TFS, Utilities, Visual Studio 2010
Well, Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 have been “in the wild” for a little over a week now.  Now that the RTM versions have had a few days to settle in, I decided to do a quick survey of some of my favorite utilities to see if they have been updated to support the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010.  Here is the list: GhostDoc (v2.5.09166) – this is a great add-in for Visual Studio to help with the mundane task of providing XML documentation for your code.  After using this utility for even…
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12 Apr 2010

Visual Studio 2010 Launches/RTMs!

Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
After months (years?) of anticipation, Visual Studio 2010 has finally launched/RTM’d!  If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download the full version from the MSDN Subscribers site.  The trial editions should be available on the Microsoft Downloads site soon. There are far too many new features in Visual Studio 2010 to be listed here.  However, here are a few links to get you started…     Visual Studio 2010 Home Page Compare Visual Studio 2010 Product Features Visual Studio 2010 Documentation Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management What’s New in Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework…
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16 Mar 2010

Team Explorer 2005 Update for TFS 2010 is Available

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
If you are using Visual Studio 2005 (along with Team Explorer 2005) to access Team Foundation Server, an update patch has been released that will allow Team Explorer 2005 to communicate with Team Foundation Server 2010. In general, after installing the update patch, you will be able to use Visual Studio 2005 to access legacy (2005) TFS servers as well as TFS 2010 servers.  If you switch to a TFS 2010 server, you will be able to continue using the basic functionality of TFS but will not be able to utilize new TFS 2010 features (e.g. Branch Visualization, creating new…
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12 Mar 2010

Save on Visual Studio 2010 Professional and Pre-Order Now

Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 but you can beat the rush and secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the affordable estimated retail price of $549, a saving of $250. If you use a previous version of Visual Studio or any other development tool then you are eligible for this upgrade. Along with all the great new features in Visual Studio 2010 (see www.microsoft.com/visualstudio) Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription which gives you access to core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008…
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02 Mar 2010

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Installation Failure

TFS, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
If you attempt to install the .NET Framework 4 (RC – not sure yet if this will be an issue at RTM) or Visual Studio 2010/Team Foundation Server 2010 RC (which will install the .NET Framework 4 as a dependency) and the Windows Update service is not running, the install will fail. When installing Team Foundation Server 2010 without the Windows Update service running, then you may see a dialog like this one (assuming you don’t already have the .NET Framework 4 installed):   If you’re installing only the .NET Framework 4 without the Windows Update service running, then you…
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26 Feb 2010

Ten Features in Visual Studio 2010 You May Not Know About

Tips, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010
There are a LOT of new features coming in Visual Studio 2010.  Some of them are very big features (e.g. IntelliTrace, Microsoft Test Manager, etc.).  However, there are lots of smaller features that, even though small, are great additions to Visual Studio. It would take a lot of time and space to list each and every new feature in Visual Studio 2010 so I’ve picked ten new features that I personally find interesting and outlined them below: Removing Recent Items – If you make use of the Recently Used List (RUL) in Visual Studio, then you’ve no doubt had items…
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24 Feb 2010

Team Foundation Server Power Tools for TFS 2010 RC

TFS, Visual Studio 2010
If you’ve been trying out Team Foundation Server 2010 RC then you’ll be pleased to know that the Team Foundation Server Power Tools have been released for TFS 2010 RC.  This release contains mostly fixes and compatibility improvements for the RC.  The Team Members Power Tool is now functional as well – although if you’re not signed into Windows Communicator, it will display a dialog box alerting you that you’re not logged in (a minor annoyance). You can download the TFS Power Tools 2010 RC on the Visual Studio Gallery - here.  If you’ve installed the beta version of the…
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