Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider

The Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration. You can download it from here.

This version (1.2) includes:

• Enable handling branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003.
• Fixed issues to enable provider to support Toad for SQL Server 2.0.
• Enhanced the "Choose Folder in Team Foundation Server" dialog.
• Fixed bug which prevented Properties Dialog from displaying local path.
• Work Items Query list in the Checkin Dialog is loaded and saved on the disk.
• "Get" operation performance improvements.
• Defect fixes

Download MSSCCI provider for VSTS 2008.

Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008

Ed Hintz just announced the Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008 are now available:

The Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008 are now available here.  This is the first release of the Power Tools that work with VS2008.  We did not want to just deliver a warmed over version of the VS2005 Power Tools, so we included lot of new goodies in this release.

It includes:

• Find In Source Control
• Quick Label
• Process Template Editor
• Open in Windows Explorer
• Team Build Notificationapplet
• More commands...

Click here for download.

What Is Your TFS Configuration?

The VSTS team are working on some test planning for the next release of Team Foundation Server. One area they’re focused on is testing various possible configurations of TFS.

MS is trying to get a picture of the variety of ways that people have their TFS installations configured.  Read Chris's blog post on what they are doing and why. There is a short survey (10 questions) with no need to provide any sensitive data. Fill it out and help them to make sure that the configurations they test map to ones actually deployed ‘in the wild’. If you own or manage multiple TFS deployments, you can fill out the survey once for each.

So go and fill out the 10-question survey here for each deployment you have.

Recordings From Dev Academy 2 Available

If you want to see the sessions from Microsoft Developers Academy 2 you can do it. 

• All sessions (Hebrew screencasts)
• Recording of my session - Integrating Databases Into ALM (Hebrew screencast)
• My presentation 

Enjoy!

No Scroll Bar In The Data Dude Schema View

You won't find it.

There's no horizontal scroll bar in the schema view window like there is in the solution explorer (or other views).

The problem relevant for VS 2005 as also VS 2008.

Custom Build Number In Team Build

Many users want to modify the default build number of Team System Team Build which looks like: <Build-Type-Name>_<Date>.XXX.

You can change it by writing a custom task and call it in the BuildNumberOverrideTarget target of the MSBuild file. In this example the task will generate a unique build number based on current time:

using System;
using Microsoft.Build.Utilities;
using Microsoft.Build.Framework;

 
namespace MaorDavidBlog.Samples.MSBuild
{
    public class BuildNameGenerator:Task
    {

        private string _buildName;

        public override bool Execute()

        {            
            _buildName = DateTime.UtcNow.ToString();
            return true;
        }



        [Output]
        public string BuildName

        {
            get { return _buildName; }
        }

    }
}

The attribute “Output” indicates that BuildName property is output of the custom task.

Then, register the task in TFSBuild.proj file.

<!-- Add using task line just after import statement - - >
<UsingTask 
 TaskName="MaorDavidBlog.Samples.MSBuild.BuildNameGenerator"  
 AssemblyFile="$(MyCustomTasks)\MaorDavidBlog.Samples.MSBuild.dll"/>



<! -- Override the target towards the end of proj file - - >
<Target Name = "BuildNumberOverrideTarget" >
    <BuildNameGenerator> 
            <Output TaskParameter="BuildName"
            PropertyName="BuildName"/> 
    </BuildNameGenerator> 
</Target>

 

Next time you'll execute your build, you'll see your custom build name.

Copy WildCards With MSBuild

I got today hysterical message from a good friend that implementing in his company automatic build with Team System. The message was: "Maor, How can I copy wildcards With MSBuild? Please help!!!".

Okay. What you should do my dear friend is:

1. Create an item list if you have more than one file to copy. You can do it with the CreateItem task:

<CreateItem Include="$(MyDir)\*.*">
    <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="MyFilesToCopy" />
</CreateItem>

2. Copy!

<Copy SourceFiles="@(MyFilesToCopy)" DesginationFolder="$(MyPutputDir)" />

3. Execute your build script.

Ah, by the way, if you want to recursively copy files using the <Copy> task, read this post from MSBuild Team Blog.

Enjoy!