New TFS releases - in time for holidays

If you happen to have some leasure during holidays, you might want to check out the following:

• VS2008 and TFS2008 trial VPC (to expire in April '08). You are looking at approx. 4.5 Gb in 7 parts.


• TFS2008 only trial VPC (also to expire in April '08). You are looking at approx. 2.5 Gb in 4 parts.

While those VPC rock, one small note - the TFS server is completely bare (that is you should expect to spend some time to setup projects, build etc. if you are going to use those VPCs for demo).
And they do not have new TFS Power Tools pre-installed. What, you have not heard about it? Yes, you should download VS2008 version of Power Tools. My favorites in this version are files and status search (for all ye SourceSafe faithful, it is very similar to VSS operation - allows one to search by file name and file status) and quick label (allows labeling of the selected files/folders in one click).
And that's not all! There is also new version of MSSCCI provider for your to download!
Check Brian Harry's blog for more information.

And Happy Holidays to all! See you in 2008!

Offline in VS 2008 (continued)

In a previous post I talked about offline story for TFS and Visual Studio 2008.

And since then, several important additions have come up.

One important note relates to what exactly becomes "offline" - solution you are opening or the whole server. It turns out that the default behavior will label the whole TFS server as being offline, and as a result, when you will open another solution (without first performing "Go online" on the first one), it will be opened offline automatically. To get the whole server back "online", you will have to perform "Go online" on one of the solutions.

And that indirectly may cause a bug that is described in the MSDN forum post - when the solution is opened from Source Control Exlorer and the server is offline, the error message will appear (though I believe the flow described will not be something often used).

The nuances of offline operation are described in Ben Ryan's blog. Additionally, if you are not happy with whole TFS server being labeled offline when single solution is taken offline, Ben also describes the way to change that behavior.

I can only add that I wish Ben Ryan would post more often (less "offline" time for the blog :)- it appears that he has lots of interesting version control stories to tell.

Get latest on check-out in TFS 2008 (footnote)

One of the new features in TFS 2008 is the ability to get the latest version on the check out (yes, yes, that's the very same feature that was discussed a zillion times).

The checkbox "Get latest version of item on check out" is located in "Tools->Options" menu, "Source Control->Visual Studio Team Foundation Server" settings tab.

That would be it but for the following fact - you will see the checkbox after you installed VS2008 and Team Explorer 2008, and it will be enabled no matter what TFS server you are using (2008 client will work both with 2005 and 2008 server). But it will work as advertised only if you have TFS2008 server!

So be forewarned - it took me quite some staring at the screen and googling to understand why the latest version did not appear :)

Choices in conversion of solutions and projects to VS2008

On the weekend I am trying to catch up on my blogroll, and I have found several excellent posts on conversion between VS2005 and VS2008. Now that VS2008 is released, the conversion of code base from previous version will become a common problem, and here is some advise on dealing with that.

Of course simplest way would be just converting all solutions to VS2008 (see below why you do not have to convert projects). Here you have several choices:
- Open VS2005 solution in VS2008 and run the conversion wizard.
- Run VS2008 in command-line converting the solution in place in the background (that should be perfect if you have more than one solution :). Read more about magical command-line "/upgrade" switch in John Robbins blog post.
- Mess around with solution file in text editor. The difference between solution for VS2005 and VS2006 would be only the version specifier("Format Version 9.00" vs. "Format Version 10.00"). The difference in projects would be only MSBuild ToolsVersion attribute (that serves to define .NET toolset project is built with). Since all converted projects use 2.0, that can be easily set. Read in more detail about solution and project formats changes in DJ Park blog post.

Now, if you still need to do some development on VS2005 while doing development in VS2008 in the same solution, the best bet would be probably to create a new solution (e.g. "Solution_3.5.sln"). The projects that are using .NET 2.0 will build both in VS2005 and Orcas.

Personally, I will probably use the magnificent "/upgrade" command-line switch to convert all solutions while keeping in mind that I have an option to tweak the files by hand (sometimes it may come in handy if you need to quickly rollback certain solution to VS2005).

And another conclusion - reading blogs can be very useful and save lots of time :)

Offline and back again in VS2008

One of the most painful issues in VS2005 was its quirky offline support.

One of the first features I have checked in Visual Studio 2008 was working offline. And what can I say - it (mostly) rocks!

Let's do it step-by-step.

• You open the solution under source control and there is no connection to the server. What you get is the dialog, indicating offline condition
  
  In Output window pane appears the log message, indicating detailed reason for the offline
  
  Important note: Once the solution is opened offline, next time you open it in Visual Studio the dialog won't appear (but the output pane will show same message every time)
  
  


• If you choose to change files in your solution/project when is offline, you will have a message that file is read-only once you save the changes. There is no indication of "under source control" status for offline projects or solutions
  
  Important note: When working offline, you may edit or delete existing files or add new ones, and these types of changes will be supported when going "online" with TFS server. However, file renames are not supported
  


• Now let's go online. You open solution in VS and you have connection - but tranistion to online will not happen automatically. To sync solution/project back online you should use "Go Online" menu, that available on right-click in Solution Explorer or in "File"->"Source Control" menu.
  
  Once you hit "Go Online" requested, the dialog with changes "Go Online" dialog will appear detailing the changes performed while online. The dialog shows files and
  changes (add/edit/delete) performed while offline. You may choose not to pend the changes for specific files (then the file will remain writable, but will not have pending changes).
  
  Important note: If you did not perform any changes while offline, the appropriate message will appear
  Once online, the pending changes indications will appear in Solution Explorer.
  


• If you want to unbind your solution/project from source control, all you need to do is to go to "Source Control"->"Change Source Control" menu. The message will appear asking you whether you want to go online or permanently unbind your solution.
  

But of course, there were several "Things I did not like":

1. No cancel on Offline dialog - either go offline or ...?


2. No indication for source controlled files in Solution Explorer in offline mode (similar to that of VSS) - only read-only flag on file serves as an indication


3. "Change Source Control" dialog does not allow one to "Disconnect", you can only "Unbind; so going offline happens only when server is not available
   

Overall, I should say I liked VS2008 experience very much (especially as compared with previous version). I can feel that feedback on TFS2005 offline experience was not wasted!

The one and the only non-technical post

As a rule I post only about things technical and TFS related. This post is not going to be technical. Be forewarned!

I just could not pass it. The guy is absolutely hilarious - every picture is in different style, and I liked enormously the sense of humour and diversity of it. So this being Friday and this blog being my personal blog - I will bust the technical only rule for that once!

Here it is - The Perry Bible Fellowship. Or may be this one? A word of warning though - some of the pictures may be a bit risque so parental advisory is strongly suggested.

Have a nice weekend!