August 2008 Archives

Team Foundation Server uses Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) to provide the project portal infrastructure. If you installed TFS 2005 then you will probably have WSS 2.0 installed, even if you later upgraded to TFS 2008.  WSS 3.0 gets installed by default with TFS 2008 installations and is *much* better than WSS 2.0 - not just in the area of cross-platform and cross-browser support but just better all round.  If you have a WSS 2.0 site running your TFS 2008 project portals then I would encourage you to upgrade to WSS 3.0 wether you need cross-platform support or not.

Anyway.  Here at Teamprise we like the Wiki way of working to manage content on our team project portal, and WSS 3.0 comes with basic wiki capabilities.  The only problem is that by default the Sharepoint wiki uses an ActiveX control for content editing which obviously presents a few problems when editing content from a Mac or Linux machine.

Luckily, the kind and clever folks at Telerik come to the rescue with a (free) cross-platform alternative to the WSS (and MOSS) editor.

Installing the editor in a standard WSS 3.0 portal as used by TFS takes a few minutes.  Basically, you have to carry of the following steps:

• Install ASP Ajax Controls
• Download and install the RadEditor Lite for MOSS
• Set the RadEditor to be the default editor for Lists and Wiki's in your Team Project site.

Finally, if you are using a standard WSS project portal then you will also need to configure the RadEditor to insert standard hyperlinks.  Until you do this part, the Link button in the RadEditor control will not work.  It took me a while to figure out how to get this button enabled - basically you have to go to %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\wpresources\RadEditorSharePoint\5.2.0.0__1f131a624888eeed\Resources on the server hosting your sharepoint sites (which is the TFS server in my case) and edit ListToolsFile.xml and ToolsFile.xml replacing the line

<tool name="MossLinkManager" />

with

<tool name="LinkManager" />

You then might need to do an iisreset and hit refresh in your browser to clear all the caches but your link button should now work great.

Once this is all done, you will be able to edit wiki pages and other HTML content from Safari, Firefox on your platform of choice.

Over on Radio TFS we've just published a special episode on the Database Edition of Team System with the man himself, Gert Drapers.  In the show Gert brings us up to speed on how the product got started, where it is now and where it is going in the future.  We also spent a lot of time talking about the latest CTP (released last night) of the Database Edition GDR along with a few exclusive bits of information that I'd not heard elsewhere before.

As well as listening to the show, be sure to check out Gert's blog post for more details.  Don't forget that you can subscribe to the RSS Feed in iTunes or Zune so you need never miss an episode.  This was our first "special guest" show and we have a few more planned in for the future.  If you have someone that you'd like us to talk to then email radiotfs@gmail.com to let us know.

To celebrate my 5 year anniversary of blogging, I gave this site a long overdue refresh over the weekend.  While I've been publishing stuff on the Woodwardweb.com domain since 1999, that was initially just putting pages up with notepad and Dreamweaver.  I didn't start proper blogging until 2003 and have had the same site design since early 2004.  Back then blog software was in its infancy and I only had about 8 readers anyway so I really didn't need to worry about niceties like site navigation, good handling of comments etc. 

None of the designs I've had on my site have had particularly long spent on them and the current one is no exception, however it does contain a comic book rendition of me which is courtesy of the highly talented SourceGear marketing department.  Apart from the obvious UI changes, I've updated my blog software (Moveable Type) and introduced a better commenting system as well as moving to tags and search as the main navigation mechanisms.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about the new site, please do let me know what you think and any problems you have in finding stuff.

Now that TFS 2008 SP1 is here, time to create a version of the TFS installer media that just contains the bits with SP1 applied.  This is essential for installations targeting SQL Server 2008, but also makes the installation process onto Windows Server 2008 much easier and any installation faster (otherwise you have to install TFS 2008, then apply the service pack).  Note that this is only required for new TFS installations - if you already have TFS installed then you are best of simply running the excellent service pack installer and it will do the business.  Hopefully in a few weeks Microsoft will make a TFS 2008 with SP1 ISO image available, but in the meantime I thought I would write up the process of creating your own as I did mine.

Update:  After creating the patched install of everything and running it, there were errors for the Team Build and Proxy installers.  Talking with fellow MVP Etienne Tremblay this is apparently a known issue, documented as such (d'oh, I should really RTFM) and that slipstreaming of the Build and Proxy stuff is not supported at this present time.  I've therefore updated this post to include the TFS SP1 rather than patched Build and Proxy installations so that you can do it the old fashioned way of installing, then patching...

Pre-requisites

• TFS 2008 Installation DVD (Workgroup, Trial or Full)
• TFS 2008 Service Pack 1
• An iso creating tool (I will use ISORecorder because it is good, free and works on Windows Vista x64).
• A couple of gigs worth of spare hard disk space to work in.

Slipstreaming the TFS Installation Files

1. First, you must copy the contents of the TFS installation media onto a temporary folder on your hard drive. In my case I have created a folder called D:\tfs_sp1\source and copied the contents there.
   
2. Extract the contents of the TFS installer executable by running the following command:
   en_visual_studio_team_system_2008_team_foundation_server_service_pack_1_x86_x64wow.exe /extract:<location>
   
3. Run the following command to apply the patch to the contents of the main TFS application installation folder (AT):
   msiexec /a <RTM Source Dir>\AT\vs_setup.msi /p TFS90sp1-KB949786.msp TARGETDIR=<SP1 Target Dir>\AT
   
4. Note that slipstreaming the Build and Proxy installations is not supported at this time.  Also, the sharepoint extensions folder  (wssExt) does not need patching so we can just copy these over.
5. Because slipstreaming the Build and Proxy is not supported, you will also want to copy over the original service pack .exe file so that you can run it after installing them.
6. Also, the Team Foundation Server client (Team Explorer) requires Visual Studio 2008 SP1, not the service pack for TFS.  If you installed Team Explorer without the service pack onto a SP1 server then bad things can happen (I've seen class serialization errors but you might see other symptoms) - therefore you might want to exclude the TFC folder from this SP1 disc so that you have to install it from a Visual Studio Team Suite disc instead - hopefully remembering to run Visual Studio SP1 afterwards.  However if, like me, you frequently install Team Explorer onto your TFS servers so that you can manage them directly from the server then you might want to also include the offline installation for Visual Studio on your new ISO image, that way you can quickly get access to the service pack.  To get hold of the offline installer, download the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 iso image, mount the image and then copy the vs90sp1 folder. 
7. While you are at it, you might as well download the latest copy of the TFS Install Guide.  If you are really fancy you can copy all the files over from the root of the RTM source and edit the setup.ini file to point to the new version of the document (mine is TFSInstall-RTM-v080811.chm).
8. Now we have a nice little package that contains all the bits we need to install TFS SP1 onto a server.  Mine looks like this: 
   
   If we go look inside the AT folder and check the file versions, we can see which assemblies were patched.  The TFS2008 RTM versions of the assemblies were 9.0.21022.8 but the TS 2008 SP1 versions are 9.0.30729.1
   
9. You could just burn the contents of your SP1 folder to a DVD, but I personally like to have it as an ISO image so that I can easily archive it and point to it from a Virtual PC. To create an ISO image using the excellent ISORecorder is very easy - just right click on your SP1 folder and select "Create ISO Image".
   

And there you have it. A handy ISO image that should speed up your TFS installations no end.  Happy installing!

That's right folks, 2008 SP1 is now available for everyone to download.  Get it while it's hot!

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (needed for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team System client, including Team Explorer), (exe version) (iso image version)

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (needed for the server, build server and proxy server)

Note that to install TFS 2008 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008, you must create a slipstreamed install.  Also - if you have installed any of the pre-release bits on a client machine then you should run the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool first.

For more information on what is in this release from a TFS perspective, see Brian Harry's blog post or listen to Radio TFS Episode #6.

In this first episode back from the summer break we talk about the features available in TFS Version Control and talk about some of the fundamental concepts that you should understand to make your life easier.  Don't forget to stay tuned all the way to the end when I offer up a brainteaser for everyone and Paul goes crazy and offers a FULL copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite to a lucky listener drawn at random who provides a correct answer to radiotfs@gmail.com before the end of August 2008.

If that is not enough for you, Mickey is running a competition over at Team System Rocks where you could win a years MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio Team Suite.

Don't forget that you can subscribe to the show using the RSS Feed in iTunes or Zune. You can also listen to the show direct.

For feedback or suggestions for future shows please contact us at radiotfs@gmail.com or leave a comment over at the Radio TFS web site.