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

28 Aug 2006

Sandcastle – August 2006 CTP

CTP

The August 2006 CTP of Sandcastle is available for download. Here is a summary of new features:Firefox support for Sandcasltle generated HTMs3 different link options (local, Index and MSDN) in sandcastle.config file. /internal+- option in MrefBuilder enables documentation of private APIs to be produced for the internal consumption of development teams Support for multi-dimensional arrays Support for CHM Index and root node. Additional transforms are added to CHM generation process to accomplish this. Support for all C# tags and html style elements in code comments Abilty to use environment variables in config files Changes to syntax for XSLTransformRead more about…

22 Aug 2006

New TFS RSS Feeds

TFS

As some of you may be aware, I've kept a list of useful (at least in my mind) links to various Team Foundation Server-related sites and utilities on our company's web site. There are currently two links: TFS Utilities TFS LinksAlthough I feel this is a useful list I thought I would make it easier to access by providing RSS feeds to the content. So now there are two more links: TFS Utilities RSS Feed TFS Links RSS FeedThis feed should be viewable by any news aggregator that supports the RSS 2.0 standard. As always, if you've ran across a…

19 Aug 2006

Sandcastle – Building API Documentation

Utilities

For anyone who has ever had to generate documentation for their .NET projects, you know only too well how difficult and time consuming that can be. There have been a few utilities available in the past that helped out in this area. One example is NDoc. NDoc generates some very nice API documentation in several different formats. However, it doesn't work so well for Visual Studio 2005. Also, the original developer of NDoc has recently announced that he is dropping future development for NDoc in favor of Sandcastle (as well as other circumstances - although the project may be picked up…

01 Aug 2006

TFS Sidekicks Release

TFS

A new version of the Team Foundation Sidekicks utilities has been released. Version 1.1 introduces a new History Sidekick as well as a new user interface where all Sidekicks are now available within a single UI.The History Sidekick application pane provides the following features:View version control tree with files and folders (similar to Source Control Explorer) Search item (file or folder) by name and select found item in version control tree View selected item history either for all users or filtered by user Compare file versions selected in history View selected item properties and pending changes View selected item branches…

07 Jul 2006

Determine TFS Trial Edition Expiration Date

TFS

Martin Woodward has posted a tip on how to determine the expiration date of the 180 day trial edition of TFS. The short version is to run the following TFS command and add 180 days to the return value.tf changeset 1 /server:http://servername:8080 /nopromptHere's an on-line date calculator to help with the addition.You can read the full tip here.

20 Jun 2006

TFS Bug Snapper v1.0 Released

TFS

A handy little utility, Bug Snapper, has been created and released by Grant Holliday. This utility allows you to quickly and easily create a "bug" work item within a Team Project without having to go through the Team Explorer client. You can quickly type in a title and description, specify a ranking, and take a screen shot.You can download the latest release here.You can also download the source code here.

20 Jun 2006

TFS Service Pack 1 in the Works

TFS

It looks like the Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 is getting closer to its initial beta release. Based on a blog post by Brian Harry, there is no current (public) timeline set for release but he expects the beta to be available in the "not too distant future".Here is a list of improvements included in TFSSP1:Version Control, WorkItem Tracking and Datawarehouse performance/scale improvements - the majority of these have come from our continued internal deployment. You can read one of my earlier blog posts for more detail on what kinds of things we've hit and addressed. We're now seeing…

12 Jun 2006

Tech-Ed 2006 is in Full Force

Conferences

Tech-Ed 2006 is now in ful force in Boston! I arrived yesterday afternoon, checked in, received a bag full of goodies and attended the keynote address. I had a nice, long, descriptive post about the keynote but the hard drive in my tablet PC decided to go kabunk this morning (it made some really horrible sounds and finally "blue-screened" Windows). So, if I'm able to retrieve any data from my hard drive, I'll post about the keynote at a later time.This morning (Monday) I attended the session "Building Modern Software Services, Workflow and Identity" by David Chappell. He was a…

07 Jun 2006

MSBuild Sidekick is Released

TFS

The developers from Attrice have done it again. They have released a brand new sidekick - the Microsoft Build Sidekick. The Microsoft Build Sidekick allows you to edit your MSBuild projects in a graphical, hierarchical format. You can also use this utility to modify your TFS build types. It can take a few seconds to open up a build file and have it displayed in the utility but once it's loaded, it is very easy to work with.Here is a list of initial features:Load and modify any file complying to MSBuild schemaView build project structure in a tree view that…

23 May 2006

Team Foundation Server Build Clean-up Service

TFS

Mitch Denny has posted a new TFS build clean-up service that will clean up your TFS build files throughout the day (at some pre-configured interval). If you find that you occasionally go in to manually delete old build files, this utility could be of use.There are certain rules that must be met before the utility will remove the build files, including:Has the expiry date for the build been reached?Does the drop location exist?Has the build actually completed?Has the build been abandoned? Read the full details in Mitch's post.