TFS: Patterns & Practices Guidance for Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Well, the folks over at P & P have done it again.  They have released a set of guidance for the use of VS 2005 Team System and TFS to CodePlex.  It covers Source Control, Build and gives a Resource Index.

"Welcome to the patterns & practices Visual Studio 2005 Team System project Community site.
The purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around using Visual Studio Team System 2005. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, VSTS team members, and industry experts."

All I have to say is... BRILLIANT!

Thanks Guys for all of the hard work!

- Steve

TFS Team Build: Schema for the WorkspaceMappings.xml file

Buck Hodges (Dev Lead for Team Build and all around good guy) has written an article describing the "schema" for the WorkspaceMappings.xml file.  This file is used by Team Build to create a valid workspace for the build to run within.  It is usually hand edited and maintenance can be error-prone.  Bucks guidance goes a long way to clarifying the implementation of this functionality.

"The WorkspaceMapping.xml file is one of the files generated when creating a new build type.  Those of you who've had to customize a build are probably familiar with the TfsBuild.proj file, which is the top-level file used to orchestrate the build.

The WorkspaceMapping.xml file is used by one of the custom tasks to create the TFS workspace that contains the files to be built.  In version 1 of Team Build, you must edit the WorkspaceMapping.xml file in order to change the mappings used by the workspace created for the build (in Orcas, you can do this in the GUI, and this file is no longer generated or used).

There’s no formal schema on MSDN.  Here are the rules..."    - Buck Hodges

Luckily, this file goes away and a GUI arrives in Orcas.

- Steve

Martin Woodward on TFS Workspaces

Martin Woodward has just started a series of articles covering the basics of TFS Workspaces.  His first article is Workspace 101: An Introduction to TFS Workspaces. 

" One of the concepts that people need to understand when they begin to work with Team Foundation Server Version Control is that of the Team Foundation Server (TFS) Workspace. So I thought I would write a series of blog-posts covering the basics of TFS workspaces, with this post being the first. This information may be a little basic to many of the people who read my blog (especially this first post) and it is just a write up of how I think about workspaces and how I explain the concept to others. "   - Martin Woodward

This article is an excellent start to describing an extremely important and often misunderstood piece of TFS Version Control.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

- Steve

A Gadget for monitoring TFS Queries in Vista

Mario Rodriguez has announced that his team at Microsoft is working on a gadget for Vista's Sidebar that allows you to view the results of any TFS Query.  It is in Alpha right now, but he's hopeful that it will be released in Beta form in the March-April timeframe. I am looking forward to using this wonderful little tool (as soon as I can install Vista on my work laptop).  Kudos to Mario and the whole team. - Steve

TFS Version Control Database Size Limit

I just came across a posting in the MSDN TFS Version Control Forum.  The author was asking if there was any limitation to the size of a file that could be checked into the repository.  The answer, of course, is that the limitation is whatever SQL Server can handle.

Richard Berg was nice enough to post a link to the SQL Server maximum capacity page.  It seems that you are restricted to having a maximum of 1 Exabyte (1,048,516 terbytes) per database. 

Seems like it should be enough...

TFS Guidance Whitepaper

As I was reading through the day's blogs, I came across a post by Mickey Gousset about a whitepaper discussing good practices to use in the field when implementing Team Foundation Server.  The author, Willy-Peter Schaub, has some good points to take note of.

Team Foundation Server Guidance Whitepaper by Willy-Peter Schaub

Team Foundation Power Tools v1.2 Released

Rob Caron, Buck Hodges, Ed Hintz, Jim Manning & Mickey Gousset have all announced the release of version 1.2 of the Team Foundation Power Tools.  Some of them point back to others (just like I'm doing). 

To get a view from the Team Build side of things, check out Buck's post. 

Rob notes that is you want to use the Process Template Editor you will need the Domain-Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable Components.  He also has a link to an article in Redmond Developer News discussing the process template editor.

- Steve

Tom Hollander and the Curse of MAX_PATH

Update (27-Mar-2008): This post applies to Team Build 2005. If you are working with TeamBuild 2008, the team has done a great job in helping to get around this issue. For more info, please see Aaron Hallberg's post.

I've been busy with my blogs today between reading system documentation. I came across a post by Tom Hollander describing how his work with the Enterprise Library has been dogged by paths that have gotten out of hand. His experiences are very similar to my own with regard to bumping up against the limit of a path.

Once upon a time, in the kingdom of DOS, the people all used 8.3 filenames for their programs, documents and source files. The subjects got used to files like LETTER.DOC, MSCDEX.EXE and VBRUN200.DLL. Nobody ever knew whether there was any limit to the number of 8.3 names that could be strung together to make deep paths, since there were no good GUI tools or even tab-completion, so the paths needed to a manageable length to enable typing by hand. And besides, there were only so many files you can fit on a 20Mb hard disk.

During the reign of Windows 95, the wise ruler decided that the people deserved more, and they were granted long filenames. Now any filename could have as many as 256 characters. And the people rejoiced...

Tom Hollander

When working with Team Build, you will inevitably run across this issue. Be warned!

UPDATE (17-APR-2007): I just came across a blog post from the Base Class Library team regarding the reasons this "bug" hasn't been fixed. It's interesting reading.

Harry Potter-esque graphic used without Tom's permission or even his knowledge, I just thought it was cool!

Technorati tags: Tom Hollander, MAX_PATH, TFS, MSBuild

Note to Self: Visual Studio Team System Tech Notes

While catching up on my blog reading I came across this little tidbit (thanks to J.D. Meier).  This is the Index to the VSTS Tech Notes.  Here's the quick description of the resource:

TechNotes are short, focused technical articles that explain a specific concept or walk through a particular scenario. TechNotes are intended to supplement the product documentation and technical articles. In addition, we have brought together some of our very best blog postings in a central location.

How To: Read MS Project files to create Task Work Items in TFS

I just came across this post in the MSDN forums where the author wanted to read a Microsoft Project file via API to create tasks in TFS.  IT was resolved by pulling the MS Project Primary Interop Assemblies from Microsoft Downloads and then using the API exposed.  It looks like something I may want to play with in the future, so I'm leaving this link here as a reminder to myself.

Hi,
I have a .MPP file created using MS Project 2003. Now, I need to read the tasks in it (through my code) and create work items corrsponding to each task (again through my code).
 i.e. I want to do the same functionality that the 'Publish' button on Team toolbar in MS Project 2003 does.
Is there any object model/SDK/APIs to read the contents of .MPP file?

Manasi

My Nice New RSS Feed Reader (and my old one)

It's been pretty slow on the TFS front lately as the client I'm currently working with doesn't use it.  So to fill some of this gaping void, I'd like to let you all know about an RSS reader that I just started using.

Here's the thing, I was using Newzie for my feed reader, but one specific "feature" really bothered me.  It seems that Newzie differentiates between "New" and "Unread" articles.  New articles are ones that have been posted during the period since you started Newzie up and Unread ones are just that, those that you haven't read yet.  Well, here's the gripe.  Newzie doesn't have a way to say "Instead of showing me just the New articles, show me all of the Unread ones."  So when you restart your computer (which is common with a laptop), Newzie moves all of the existing New articles to the Unread bucket and waits for more New ones.  With that done, you no longer see the unread ones without going to each feed and clicking on the "Show unread" link.  That makes it really easy to forget that those articles are unread.  My feeling is that the company messed up on this one.  I really want to see everything I haven't read because I may be two, three or more days behind.

I've now found Omea Reader from JetBrains.  As you can see from the screenshot, it shows not only the stuff from today, but also the unread articles broken down by age.  I really like this.  I also use it to monitor the MSDN Forums. 

If anyone can recommend a reader that is better than this, please leave a comment and let me know.  I'm always in the market for new toys!

- Steve

 

Here's a screen shot of Omea Reader (click on picture for larger version):