August 19, 2011 – Learn TFS Daily

What if programming languages were religions? It’s an old one but a good one. Friday is a good day. On with the links…

August ’11 TFS Power Tools are available! from Brian Harry
Brian brings word that the August 2011 Team Foundation SERVER Power Tools have been released! You can download the Power Tools here, download the MSSCCI Provider here, and download the Build Extensions here.

August 2011 – New TFS 2010 Power Tools Released from Ed Blankenship
Ed also blogs about the power tools release, but he specifically highlights a couple of new features including “Rollback of a Changeset” and the ability to compare build definitions via the command-line. He also points out that you don’t have to uninstall prior versions of the tools any more – now you can just install the new tools and you’re done.

TeamPulse R2 2011 is Here! from Telerik
A new TeamPulse release is out and it includes a host of new features including backlog management, email notifications, shared views, tags, and the ability to comment on user stories, bugs, issues, and risks. I really like the comment feature, and think it should be built into TFS work items.

New TFS 2010 Community TFS Build Extension Documentation – nUnit from Richard Fennell
Richard has added documentation on the nUnit activity that is part of the TFS Build Extensions. Check it out for details and screens on how to use the nUnit activity. Not using the TFS Build Extensions yet? You should be.

August 18, 2011 – Learn TFS Daily

What programming font do you use? Here are the top 10. On with the links…

Interpreting C++ Code Coverage Results from John Socha-Leialoha
Yesterday John showed us how to enable code coverage in Visual Studio for C++ projects, and here he shows us how to interpret code coverage results. More importantly (and this applies to everyone), he explores the Code Coverage Report and how it can be customized. Great stuff.

App.config Transform Visual Studio Add-In from Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
This post explores a Visual Studio add-in called SlowCheetah – XML Transforms that enables a scenario where you can use something similar to web.config transforms but for non-web projects. This has a number of interesting uses for applications that have different configurations stored in XML files. Details and screens are at the link.

TFS Projects Best Practices (ACV) … Which Epics Should We Be Considering for This Likely New Project? from Willy-Peter Schaub
The Rangers team will likely have a new project providing some best practices assistance around organizing your Team Projects and Team Project Collections in Team Foundation Server. They are soliciting some guidance about what the scope of the project should be, so get over there and let your voice be heard.

One Year Since TeamPulse V1 from Joel Semeniuk
Joel reflects on the first release of TeamPulse and the year that has unfolded since. He also provides a peek into the roadmap for upcoming releases, so you can see where the product is headed.

August 17, 2011 – Learn TFS Daily

These are the coolest pictures you’ll see all day. On with the links…

Capturing C++ Code Coverage with Visual C++ from John Socha-Leialoha
John shares a trick to show how to capture code coverage directly in Visual Studio for C++ code. The trick is to have the /Profile switch on. Details and screens can be found at the link.

Ruck v2 Enhancements?!? … Getting Ready for the Next Wave of Ranger Projects from Willy-Peter Schaub
This post outlines the Visual Studio ALM Rangers Ruck process, and describes a few enhancements to the process the Rangers will be trying with the next set of Ranger projects. Also mentioned is that the process will be described in an upcoming MSDN Magazine article. The Ruck process is definitely an interesting stab at making teams small teams productive in highly distributed environments, which is very much like how many startups work today.

More on Using the StyleCop TFS23010 Build Activity – Handling Settings Files from Richard Fennell
Richard has another post on using the StyleCop TFS 2010 Build Activity and in this one, he discussed using the settings files to associate different StyleCop rules with different solutions that are being built.

PerformancePoint Services for Microsoft Project Server 2010 White Paper from Christophe Fiessinger
Christophe points us to a whitepaper released by Microsoft on Business Intelligence in Project Server 2010. This is definitely worth a read if you’re looking at using Project Server 2010 to help provide better business intelligence about what’s going on in your organization or enterprise.

I’m a Phony. Are You? from Scott Hanselman
This post really resonates with me, as I was having a conversation about this very thing with a friend a couple of days ago. I’ve consulted long enough and have enough experience to be considered an “expert”, but the reality is that I’m a complete phony. The emperor has no clothes. What I also know, is that everyone else is a phony as well. And this applies to professionals in every field of study: physicians, economists, lawyers, biologists, rocket scientists, coaches, Steve Jobs, and so on. Certainly, those people may know more about their particular expertise than I do, but that doesn’t make them infallible authorities. The best thing you can do is, if someone considers you an “expert”, don’t let it to go your head. Share what you know as graciously as you can, and pay attention to what others are doing so you can learn from them as well.

August 16, 2011 – Learn TFS Daily

I missed a couple of days as reality caught up with me. Miss me? I’ll make it up to you. You should check this amazing photo of the Perseid meteor shower in the meantime. On with the links…

Welcome to Building Windows 8 from Building Windows 8
Microsoft has launched a blog titled Building Windows 8 that you should be subscribed to. There’s no big news we didn’t already know shared in this post, but the tone that is set in the post should tell you this will certainly be a great resource once the curtains are pulled back. Windows 8 is going to be a big one, if that wasn’t already obvious.

Building Apps with HTML5: What You Need to Know from Brandon Satrom
The August issue of MSDN Magazine has a great article introducing HTML5 for developers and framing what HTML 5 really is. Ultimately, it’s not simply meant to be an update to HTML, but rather an umbrella for an entire set of web technologies/standards that includes CSS3 and JavaScript. If HTML5 is old hat for you, there’s nothing new here. But if you’ve yet to really dive in, this is a great starting point.

PowerShell: Get-ProcessUpTime from Doug Finke
I’ve started to get more interested in PowerShell so you’ll probably notice an uptick of PowerShell related links. Consequently, I like this post that describes how to use PowerShell to get process up time via script. Code and details at the link. PowerShell is a powerful tool that is generally under-utilized, so if you aren’t familiar with PowerShell you should look into fixing that.

Building with Team Foundation Server from Bryan Group
Bryan has written an interesting post on setting up a build server to use Wix, BRDLite, and to configure a build definition to use both. This is a great example of how to troubleshoot common issues in making your build work for you.

TFS 2010 - Overriding build settings from Jason Prickett
Jason has a great post on how to override several build settings that are defined in the registry. The primary example he uses is a change to the build report polling time. Good info.

August 11, 2011 – Learn TFS Daily

We’ve found the Second Foundation. Didn’t think I forgot about you, did you? On with the links…

Automatically Merging Work Items in TFS 2010 from Jakob Ehn
This post shows you how to automatically associate work items with changesets that contain merges. The problem is that when a developer initially checks in a changeset, they should associate the work items that relate to the check in. Later, when the files are merged forward, it can be difficult to associate the merge with all of the relevant changesets if you want to consistently trace your changes back to the work that was initially assigned. Jakob has written an event handler to handle all of this and posted it to CodePlex for you to analyze and grab. Great stuff. Details and screens at the link.

How to Install and Configure MOSS 2010 for TFS2010 from Tim Elhajj
Tim has put together a nice video showing you how to install MOSS 2010 on the same server as Team Foundation Server, how to install TFS, and how to get them configured to work together. Details and written instructions can be found at the link.

Test Manager Fails to Load After Installing Test Scribe from Tiago Pascoal
Tiago ran into an issue where installing Test Scribe seemed to cause Microsoft Test Manager to crash immediately on startup. It turns out Test Scribe depends on Team Explorer, so you’ll need to have it installed as well. Tiago has more details in his post.