A Developer's Life » Software Development, 42, and everything in between

17 Oct 2008

VSLive! Las Vegas – Day 3

Conferences, Team System, TFS

Well, the "regular" conference sessions are now over. All that is left is the post-conference session which includes an all-day hands on lab for LINQ. I will spend part of the day in this session until it's time to head to the airport. Once again, I spent the last session day in ALM sessions related to Team Foundation Server. The first session of the day was mine, "Using Team Foundation Build in the "Real" World". I thought the session went very well (I suppose the feedback will tell the real story :-). There was great attendance and a lot of…

17 Oct 2008

TFSInfo Updated for TFS 2008 SP1

TFS, Utilities

The TFSInfo utility has been updated for TFS 2008 Service Pack 1. This update includes the following changes: UPDATE: TFSInfo will correctly report TFS 2008 SP1 when it is installed. UPDATE: TFSInfo now displays the TFS installation folder. FIX: TFSInfo now finds the TFS installation folder when it has been installed in a non-default location. You can see from the screen shot which information is displayed. In case you can't see the image, the following information is displayed by TFSInfo: AT Server Name AT Version AT Edition (e.g. Standard, Workgroup, or Trial) TFS Installation Folder DT Server Name DT Server…

16 Oct 2008

VSLive! Las Vegas – Day 2

Conferences

Day 2 is now a wrap and the conference continues to go strong. As you may have suspected, I spent my time in the ALM sessions around the subjects of TFS Work Item Tracking, Team System Add-Ons, and Branching Strategies. All the sessions I attended were very good although I didn't attend every session because I spent a little time polishing up my slides and demos for my talk on Thursday morning (Using Team Build in the "Real" World). I would have to say my favorite talk of the day was the one on Branching Strategies by Jeff Levinson. There…

15 Oct 2008

VSLive! Las Vegas – Day 1

Conferences

The first day of VSLive! Las Vegas is now in the books. This is my first time attending a VSLive! conference so I wasn't sure what to expect. The keynote was given by Stephanie Saad, the Group Program Manager for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. She discussed the use of Team Foundation Server throughout Microsoft and some of the challenges they ran into while using the product. The scale at which they make use of Team Foundation Server is somewhat staggering in comparison to the seven developer teams at the company I work for. Along with one of her co-workers,…

14 Oct 2008

Visual Studio 2010 Links

Team System, Visual Studio

There has been a lot of information coming out over the past couple of weeks regarding Visual Studio 2010 so I thought I'd consolidate a list of links that provide some information about what may be included in the next release: Informational Posts Visual Studio Team System 2010 Overview - a quick overview of what's being accomplished in VSTS 2010. PodCasts and Videos RadioTFS Interview with Habib Heydarian on VS 2010 Developer Features. Historical Debugger (10:47) - demonstrates the use of the Historical Debugger in VSTS 2010. This promises to be a great feature for developers everywhere! An early look…

14 Oct 2008

Team Foundation Build 2010

Team Build, Team System, TFS

I just finished watching a great video from Jim Lamb on Channel 9 covering some of the new features for Team Foundation Build 2010. The video is about 35 minutes long and is well worth the watch. Here's a quick synopsis of what's covered in the video: Team Foundation Build 2010 will support Windows Workflow 4.0. This feature alone would make a worthy upgrade to Team Foundation Build. The new Workflow UI being designed for the .NET Framework 4.0 will be included in the build type editor within VS 2010 providing a fantastic user experience for modifying build types (can…

02 Oct 2008

Presentations, Races, and MVP!

Conferences, Team System

Lately, I've been quiet because I've been busy working on my presentation for this month's VSLive! Las Vegas conference. I'm looking forward to presenting on Team Build and meeting a lot of new people as well as catching up with some old acquaintances. This will be my first time to Vegas so it should be a great time all around. Along with that, I was also preparing for my first ever adventure race - the Berryman Adventure. The race was held this past weekend, September 27th, and took us just under 13 hours to complete. The disciplines included hiking/running, some…

14 Aug 2008

VS 2008 SP1 Tidbits – 1 of X

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio

Sometimes it’s the little things that excite me the most :-) For instance, in the recently released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (VS 2008 SP1), there are a few nice enhancements to the Team Explorer and Source Control Explorer that I find extremely helpful. These enhancements include: The ability to right-click on a build type within Team Explorer and select “View Configuration Folder”. This will open the Source Control Explorer pane and take you directly to the folder containing the selected build type. This is a great time saver – especially now that TFS 2008 supports storing your build…

13 Aug 2008

VS/TFS 2008 SP1 – Installation Tips

Team System, TFS, Visual Studio

Well, Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (VS 2008 SP1) has been out (RTM’d) for about three days now and several tips have materialized across the Visual Studio community that may help save you some time. These tips are broken out into Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio. Updating Team Foundation Server 2008 When upgrading a Team Foundation Server, Installation order is important (read the installation guide). As per the guide, “In deployments where the application tier and a client tier component are installed on the same computer, you must install SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 before you install SP1…

11 Aug 2008

VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Released

TFS, Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 have been released. You can read the details of what’s included as well as download the service pack here. You can also read this post and this post from Brian Harry that covers some of the features in detail.