April 29, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

May? Seriously? On with the links…

VS ALM Library Updates on MSDN for April 2011 from the Visual Studio ALM Developer Content Team
The ALM Developer Content Team provides a run-down of the new ALM content updates on MSDN for April 2011. Items include reorganized process template customization information, new project server integration content, new testing information, and an article on how TFS can help you comply with Sarbanes-Oxley.

Automating Office Tasks in a Team Build from Colin Dembovsky
Colin illustrates how to use Team Foundation Build to automate Office tasks that need to run during an automated build process.

Getting Visual Studio Installation Directory from Tiago Pascoal
In this post, Tiago shows how to determine the path where Visual Studio is installed and provides code to do it programmatically. This could be valuable in a number of instances, including custom build and custom deployment scenarios.

‘The Workbook cannot be opened’ Error on TFS 2010 Dashboard from Khurana Tarun
This post examines a common issue on a TFS 2010 SharePoint dashboard where opening an Excel workbook causes a “The Workbook cannot be opened” error and provides an easy fix.

April 28, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

Things are heating up! On with the links…

Illustration of Coded UI Test Playback Failure - "Search may have failed at ControlX as it may have virtualized children ..." from Tapas Sahoo
This post digs into one of the scenarios that the Coded UI Test tools can fail during playback, how to work through it, and why it fails in the first place. It’s another example showing how the Coded UI Test tools work and how you can use that knowledge to prevent test failures for your applications.

Lab Management: The Dreaded “Unknown Error: 0x8033811e” from Colin Dembovsky
Colin has a nice post explaining an error he encountered with Lab Management and what he did to fix it.

How to Use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Activity (Addendum) from Richard Fennell
Richard has published a follow-up to his previous post on using the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Activity showing how to add the same build process you augmented with the StyleCop build activity to other projects in a different Team Project Collection.

Release Early, Release Often from Phil Haack
I really liked this post from Phil Haack that dives into the wisdom of Eric Raymond who said “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” This walks hand in hand with the movement towards “continuous deployment”.

April 27, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

Certified authentic! On with the links…

Creating Fake Builds in TFS Build 2010 Using the Command Line from Neno Loje
Neno has published a small command-line tool that allows you to “fake” builds that could allow you to use a different build tool other than TFS build or to create sample data to show TFS functionality. It essentially shows a build result but doesn’t actually go through the build process.

Team Build – Enhancing the Build Deploy Test Workflow from Definition of Done
This post provides an improvement on the workflow XAML Microsoft published that allows for build-deploy-test with physical machines. It’s a great example of build customization and really stretches what you can do with Team Foundation Build, so if you’re neck deep in build customization you should take a look.

Scrum Dysfunction: Beware of the Rewrite Project from Ben Day
I’ve experienced firsthand the sickness Ben describes (albeit not with a Scrum team, but the symptoms were just the same) in his article on the “rewrite project”. An application rewrite is typically what some new set of hotshots plans to do in order to get rid of the technical debt and rot left by developers who have long since moved on. The result almost always ends up being a replacement of all the old problems with brand new ones, due to the hubris and lack of planning Ben describes. There are good lessons here for most teams, even if you aren’t doing anything that resembles Scrum. If only this article were around five years ago when I really needed it.

April 19th What's Happening Around Visual Studio from Jason Zander
Last week Jason linked to a number of articles and posts rounding up some of the bigger news of what’s happening with Visual Studio. Much of it has been covered here before but there’s quite a bit of stuff that wasn’t, so take a look. A lot of it has to do with Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

April 26, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

zzzZZZZZ. On with the links…

How to Use the TFS 2010 Community StyleCop Build Activity from Richard Fennell
Richard has a nice post explaining how to setup and use the StyleCop custom build activity that ships with the CodePlex Community TFS Build Extensions. Incorporating StyleCop into your builds can provide an entirely new level of validation of your code to influence quality and maintainability. If you don’t use StyleCop, get on it.

Principles 5: End-to-End Development Process (for Large Projects) from Ivo Manolov
I really liked this post that discusses and provides visual aids to understand end-to-end development processes for large software projects. If you’re into software process, this is must-read.

Controlling Lab Management VM Placement Policy from Tiago Pascoal
Tiago has a nice post showing a “trick” for configuring Lab Management to allow the deployment of more machines than your hyper-V server can theoretically hold. It’s a matter of setting how you set your Placement Policy. Details at the link.

TFS 2010 - Managing the Hidden Build Service Host Objects from Jason Prickett
Jason provides some sample code that further explores the TFS Build Automation Object Model to read, modify, create, and delete Build Service Hosts. This allows for the dynamic creation, querying, and manipulation of build Controllers and Agents to further customize your build process.

April 25, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

Keeping it real. On with the links…

How to Install TFS 2010 SP1 from Eran Ruso
If you haven’t installed Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1, check it out this post from Eran where he walks you through the installation process. If you have build servers or proxies in the mix, you can’t miss installing there as well.

Downloadable Build Process Template to Control Drop Folder Structure from Andy Lewis
Any had previously written an MSDN article Control Where the Build System Places Your Binaries, where he described how you can control where Build places its output. Now he’s provided a downloadable build template that was described in the article, so check it out.

Professional Scrum with TFS 2010 Released! from Aaron Bjork
Aaron has announced the released of his new book Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010, a book he authored along with Steve Resnick and MIchael de la Maza. The idea is that the book walks you through using Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 using the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 template. I haven’t bought this one yet but plan on doing so soon. There’s options for both a physical book and a digital book (thanks to the Kindle edition).

TFS 2010 - Build Menu IDs and Guids Jason Prickett
If you’re doing any extensibility work that involves the Build menus in Team Explorer, Jason has posted the menu guid and menu IDs for the various build menu options.

April 22, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

F-F-F-Friday! On with the links…

Mailbag Episode from Radio TFS
There’s a new episode of the Radio TFS podcast that answers a number of questions from the mailbag. Click here to subscribe to Radio TFS via iTunes and click here to subscribe via the Zune.

The Pitfalls of Code Coverage from Raul Perez
Raul has a terrific post explaining code coverage and how to use it to influence software quality. Too many teams try to look at code coverage as an absolute quantifier of the effectiveness of their testing process, and that’s simply not the case. Just because code runs doesn’t mean it runs right. Raul explains the details.

Two Great Uses of the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 from Brian Keller
Brian provides a couple of links of how people are using the OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010 to create cool things. I love this kind of stuff.

In-Place Upgrade of TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 with Move to New Domain from Martin Hinshelwood
Martin provides a recount of a complicated upgrade he did that involved upgrading TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 in place and a move of the new TFS 2010 server to a new domain. He provides a number of good tips and rules of thumb that you should definitely take a look at if you expect to encounter a similar situation in your future.

April 21, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

It keeps getting better. On with the links…

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 Demo Virtual Machine from the Microsoft Project 2010 Blog
A month or so ago Microsoft released the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack and they just announced the release of a virtual machine that has the integration configured so you can take a test drive without having to set everything up. Included are four hands-on labs to showcase the integration and to demonstrate how both tools can be leveraged together. These labs include scripts for top-down planning of business requirements, managing project details, making Agile team progress visible, and managing field mappings for integration.

Getting Started with the Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server 2010 Integration Virtual Machine from Brian Keller
Brian has a bit more on the new virtual machine with TFS 2010 and Project Server 2010 integration already built out including instructions on how to easily download everything. Obviously you’ll be pulling lots of bits across the tubes, so you should definitely take his advice and use the Free Download Manager to get the files. He’s got links to the VM downloads in his post, so check it out.

How to Install Microsoft Test Manager from Anna Russo
Anna has provided detailed instructions on how to install Microsoft Test Manager and enable all of the goodness it can provide, such as automated video recording of a test run. Also included are links and instructions to download and install Test Scribe, Visual Studio 2010 SP1, Feature Pack 2, and the latest Visual Studio Power Tools.

How to Fix the “TF30045: The instance information does not match” Error in Team foundation Server 2010 from Benjamin Day
Ben ran into an TF30045 error that caused TFS connectivity issues and has shared how he solved the problem. This error is apparently pretty rare but it’s always a good idea to file these issues just in case you run into them at some point in the future.

April 20, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

More great, great stuff this week. On with the links…

Running Code Metrics as Part of a TFS 2010 Build – The Poor Man’s Way from Steve Lange
Steve has end-to-end details on getting Code Metrics information during your build process, setting thresholds for the collected metrics, and reporting metrics results via a pretty HTML report. Steve also links to other solutions that involve using thresholds for metrics to determine build failure.

TFS 2010 - Bulk Updating Build Definitions (Retention Policies) from Jason Prickett
If you have lots of builds and need to update their retention policies, it can be a time-consuming process to open them and do it one by one. Jason has code that will allow you to update all your build definitions at once. The code should be easy to repurpose if you want to update other build settings instead.

Excluding Folders and Files When Adding to Source Control by Richard Hundhausen
Richard has a nice post explaining how to filter certain folders and files when you are adding new items to source control.

TFS SP1 and Lab Management – Wait for the QFE from Jeff Levinson
If you’ve installed Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 and you also use Lab Management, you may run into a problem where SP1 causes a problem with test agents running in a lab environment. Jeff has details on the problem at the link. Microsoft has a QFE that will resolve this issue, but until then you might want to hold off on installing SP1 in your lab environments until the QFE is released.

April 19, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

I’m back from vacation (Coachella!) with a whole bunch of goodness in the works. And I mean for real this time. On with the links…

Architecture Tooling Guidance Version 2.1 (ABE) is Available from Willy-Peter Schaub
The Rangers have released a brand new version of their Architecture Tooling Guidance that includes a new guidance extension with automation and hand-on-lab support, new overview and how-to videos, and refreshed sample source code. If you’re interested in learning more about the architect tools, this is the place to go.

Visual Studio ALM Hands-On Labs from Visual Studio ALM Developer Content Team
The Developer and Platform Evangelism group has published a brand new set of hands-on labs on ALM related topics as part of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 training course. These labs cover topics ranging from using Microsoft Test Manager, automated testing, branching and merging visualization, IntelliTrace, architect tools, and more. Check the link for more details.

TFS Phone Explorer. Another TFS Client for WP7 from Tiago Pascoal
Tiago has a nice look at Windows Phone 7 application called TFS Phone Explorer that allows you to monitor and manage builds from your Windows Phone. I’m an Android user myself so I’m left out in the cold, but this definitely looks pretty neat. To use TFS Phone Explorer, you’ll need to install a Black Marble Proxy Service for TFS. I tried to find a link and had no luck, so maybe you’ll get more details if you buy the application.
Update: Richard Fennell has more on TFS Phone Explorer in this post.

Fail a Build if Code Coverage is Low from Definition of Done
One quality indicator people use during their build process is code coverage: what percentage of code is being exercised by the automated tests that are being run. This post shows how to set up a build to pass or fail depending on the level of code coverage. I had a client who asked about this a few months ago, and now here are all the details.

April 15, 2011 – Visual Studio and TFS Daily

I’m on vacation today, but that doesn’t stop the links!

VS2010 Multiline Find & Replace from Mark Pearl
Mark has a great post on how you can do multiline find and replace with Visual Studio 2010. It involves macros, but it’s easy as pie.

Screenshot on Test Failure from Jeff Levinson
Jeff highlights a code snippet published by a member of the testing team at Microsoft on how to programmatically do a screen capture during an automated test. Really cool stuff that is insanely easy to do.

Ruck’ing Along … What Have I Learned from More than Six Months of Dog Fooding? from Willy-Peter Schaub
This is a great post on some of the experiences the Visual Studio ALM Rangers team has had managing a geographically distributed group of people that volunteer their time but also manage incredible productivity. The Rangers use a Scrum-based methodology that is modified to suit their needs, and I think their experiences can be useful to help make your team better, so be sure to give this a read.