Like many developers, I contribute to open source projects at home – usually to scratch an itch, learn something new or just to contribute to something I love using myself. However, I work for the open source .NET Foundation which means I have a dream job of getting paid to work on open source.
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I'm excited to say that today I started a new job as the Executive Director of the .NET Foundation. The .NET Foundation is an independent non-profit organization set up to foster open development, innovation and collaboration around the Microsoft .NET development framework.
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Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had several people ask me about my dev environment for working with Git on Windows so I decided to write it up here for me to point people to. Of course the first thing that you want is Visual Studio 2013 with the built in Git tooling.
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If you want to work with your local Git repositories in some .NET code then LibGit2Sharp is your friend. It’s the open source library used by the Visual Studio Tools for Git and gives you a very idiomatic way to talk to Git from C# or VB.NET.
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If you are looking to extend Team Foundation Build using workflow activities, then the first thing you should do it take a look at the latest stable release of the Community TFS Build Extensions over on CodePlex.
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[](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470943327/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=woodweb03-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0470943327)I’ve always wanted to write a technical book and when I started getting involved in Team Foundation Server I thought that this technology area might be my chance.
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Hopefully you have heard the news by now that in February we shipped Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 SP1. Brian Harry has a couple of great blog posts (here and here) talking about the headline features of what was added, but I wanted to follow up with some smaller features that I personally use every day that you...
Continue ReadingToday, we have two things to celebrate. First is the fact that we just released a beta version of Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 SP1. Brian Harry has an excellent write up over on his blog.
Continue ReadingIn the latest episode of Radio TFS Mickey and I sat down for a chat with Jonathan Wanagel who is the Principal Development Manager over at CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting site.
Continue ReadingToday the team released a brand new version of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools. You can download the latest versions from here: TFS Power Tools Team Foundation Build Extensions MSSCCI Provider (no updates this release) Brian Harry has a great post highlighting three of the new features in the TFS power Tools up...
Continue ReadingI had the pleasure of travelling to New Orleans for the first time to speak at TechEd 2010 North America. New Orleans is now my favourite city to go to for a big conference like this. While there were plenty of hotels that you could walk to (if you can stand the humidity), there was also plenty of things to see and do.
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[](http://www.eclipsecon.org/2010/) Tomorrow I will be making my making my maiden talk at EclipseCon in Santa Clara. I’ve been at the conference all week manning the Microsoft booth and sneaking along to sessions when possible. I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed my week here.
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This morning I was creating a new build definition for the Beta branch of the initial Microsoft release of the Teamprise acquired bits. Creating a new build definition in Visual Studio 2010 is remarkably easy, but we have a fairly complex workspace template.
Continue ReadingThis morning I got an email from HR congratulating me on completing my three month probationary period at Microsoft. I hadn’t realised I had a probation period (in fact I’m pretty sure I don’t, but as I passed I’m not going to rock the boat).
Continue ReadingSince joining Microsoft it has been fantastic to see how committed everyone is to the technology that was acquired from Teamprise. When Microsoft purchased the Teamprise technology, they also hired all the developers (including me) and are investing heavily not just in the 2010 release but more importantly the...
Continue ReadingI’m at TechEd EMEA again this year after missing last year’s EMEA event due to illness. I’m busy working the Visual Studio area in the Technical Learning Centre as usual, but for the first time as Microsoft staff rather than an MVP. The show so far has been great.
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Four years ago this month, I joined a small start-up being created called Teamprise after reading about it on Eric Sink's blog. Our mission was to bring the benefits of application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Team Foundation Server to everyone.
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A feature of changeset metadata in Team Foundation Server 2008 is that it is actually editable. If you look at the changeset details for a historical check-in in Visual Studio you will notice that the comment and check-in notes fields are enabled and there is a “Save” button.
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Just released the latest Radio TFS episode. We got the whole gang together so decided to have a catch up and a chat about our first impression from using Beta 1 of Team System for a few weeks.
Continue ReadingIn TFS 2010 quite a few things have been fundamentally changed for the better, but from an end user point of view people hopefully won't notice. Things like hierarchical work items will very quickly because just how work items should work and people will scratch their heads when they go look at a TFS 2008 or TFS 2005...
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If bunnies are just a little bit too cute and fluffy for you, then you might be interested in a little side project that reader Terry Humphries just got in touch with me about.
Continue ReadingWhen you create a new build definition in Team Foundation Server, you get to define how the workspace looks for the build. By default this includes the ENTIRE team project. While this usually always works, it is nearly always not what you want.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/Windows7onMSIWind_9736/windwin7m3_2.jpg) For the record, I like Windows Vista. However, for those of us who remember the Vista beta program and even early days of running Windows Vista it wasn't always fun - largely due to the driver support but there were plenty of bugs...
Continue Reading[](http://www.teamprise.com/products/accelerator/) At PDC last night Ed Thomson announced our latest product, the Teamprise Remote Accelerator. This is a single user Team Foundation Server proxy designed for use by lone remote developers working off-site.
Continue ReadingIf you haven’t heard the news already, Microsoft have officially announced the name of the next version of Team System, previously known by the codename of “Rosario”. For Microsoft developers, this will be delivered on top of Visual Studio 2010.
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At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston today, Corey Steffen (General Manager of Teamprise and the guy that pays my wages) announced the public availability of Teamprise 3.1. This is a maintenance release free to everyone with a valid Teamprise 3.
Continue ReadingI am currently playing with SP1 of VSTS 2008 and TFS 2008 in a Windows Server 2008 VMWare instance I have. Whenever I created this particular instance I kept the disk space at 16Gb which is normally plenty for these play instances but after installing the service pack of VSTS my disk space was getting low.
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Sigh. Apple are really starting to get on my nerves. Not only is iTunes on Windows consistently very buggy, slow and foreign looking in the Windows OS - they are now trying to trick Windows users into installing Safari. On this particular machine I have never installed Safari, and I never want to.
Continue ReadingI like my build numbers to be the same number that my assemblies are versioned with (and my end deliverables). It just makes things easier to track, that way if I get a bug report in from a customer I can look at the version and easily look at the label in source control to see what code that included.
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It's funny, in these days of digital distribution, but seeing some physical media for a software project you have been closely involved with still means a great deal. Today my January MSDN shipment arrived in the mail - and lo and behold in included a proper physical DVD for Visual Studio 2008 Team System Team Suite.
Continue ReadingNo - this is not a post about the big news in Northern Ireland this past week. On Friday night I was in the middle of a rather large change that I wasn't ready to check-in to the mainline of code. However, as I am now in the habit of doing, I shelved the changes to TFS before I stopped work for the evening.
Continue ReadingJust a quick update on the TFS2008 with CruiseControl (java version) issue. I recently submitted the patch to the CruiseControl project and it has already kindly been commited into trunk by Dan Rollo. The patch should appear in the 2.7.2 release of CruiseControl.
Continue ReadingRecently I've been playing more and more with the Expression suite of tools. I especially enjoy playing with Blend 2 and pretending that I can draw. While the integration with Visual Studio 2008 is very good, a big thing that is missing for me is that there is no integration with TFS.
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So, at the risk of starting one of those annoying meme's, I've kinda had this conversation with a few folks before and people of my age always seem to enjoy it so here goes. My first computers. #### My First Computer The computer I first learnt to code on was a Commodore Vic-20.
Continue ReadingOne of the great things about version control is that it covers a number of "Hit by a Bus" scenarios. I say this with an air of joviality, but each actual use case is never a nice one. I once worked with a guy, who supposedly once worked at a place where the "Hit By a Bus" scenario was a real one.
Continue ReadingA neat (if not well known) feature of Windows Vista is the built in ability to do a "Command Prompt Here" by selecting a folder, keeping the shift key down and right clicking on the folder. While this is neat, I've sometimes found myself needing an Command Prompt with full administrative privileges.
Continue ReadingBrian Harry has posted some great news over on his blog - Microsoft have release a new tool to allow users to migrate from ClearCase to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.
Continue ReadingPaul Julius just announced that RC3 of CruiseControl 2.7.1 has been released from the Agile 2007 conference. From my point of view this is fantastic news, because it includes a patch I submitted to the project to include integration between CruiseControl and Team Foundation Server.
Continue ReadingWith Team Build in Team Foundation Server, you can have multiple build types for multiple projects. For example, we have a build that runs fast that we can have running Continuous Integration on, and a slower build (that does obfuscation, release packaging etc) that is run on demand when we want to perform a release...
Continue ReadingPeople go on about iPod + iTunes + Store being this all time great combination. I'll admit that I love my iPod, and if/when one comes out with similar capabilities to the iPhone player I'll be buying it. However, I don't think I'm being controversial here when I say that iTunes on Windows really sucks.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMoonmeetsVenusinRandalstown_E185/moon_venus%5B3%5D.jpg) On Saturday night I took a look out my kitchen window and was met with this view of the Moon and Venus.
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Yesterday we made version 2.1 of Teamprise publicly available. If you've previously installed Teamprise, then I recommend that you upgrade to this version as it includes a number of bug-fixes that while not critical are definitely useful. People who purchased a Teamprise Client Suite for Version 1 or 2.
Continue ReadingThis afternoon at EclipseCon, Corey (my boss) announced that Teamprise has joined the Eclipse Foundation. This is exciting news for us and goes well with our status as a Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner - demonstrating our commitment to both platforms.
Continue ReadingSo in my previous post, I introduced the concept of a TFS workspace. If you only have one TFS workspace then you might have so far been blissfully unaware that you had one.
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One of the concepts that people need to understand when they begin to work with Team Foundation Server Version Control is that of the Team Foundation Server (TFS) Workspace. So I thought I would write a series of blog-posts covering the basics of TFS workspaces, with this post being the first.
Continue ReadingHere at Teamprise we've recently changed our build numbering scheme. We use the traditional Major.Minor.Revision.Build approach with Major.Minor.Revision being the only thing an end user should care about and Major.Minor the only thing we would every do any marketing for.
Continue ReadingI'd been seeing this for a while now, the game of Blogtag has been running riot over the internet. Blog memes are kinda like the blog equivalent of a chain letter or a pyramid marketing scheme but very slightly less dumb and hopefully have more positive consequences.
Continue ReadingI use VMWare a lot. Not only do I use it for demonstrations of Teamprise, I also use it for day-to-day development and testing (one of the joys of developing a cross platform product that talks to a Microsoft server product). I work on a laptop most of the time.
Continue ReadingIn case you missed the excellent news, Jamie Cansdale has announced that TestDriven.NET 2.0 is now shipping. The TestDriven plug-in is essential for anyone wanting to run unit tests from with Visual Studio (any edition).
Continue ReadingTeam Foundation Server source control has a great feature called Shelving. Shelving lets you set store a batch of pending changes onto the server and optionally remove them from your local workspace.
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Just wanted to let folks know that Preview 2 is now available for download to our preview program customers. If you want to take a look at Preview 2, then you can sign up here.
Continue ReadingWe've just been having a discussion internally about ways of numbering our builds. It seems a sensible idea to qualify a build with the changeset number in our TFS repository, that way we are able to easily identify the exact status of all the files included in that build without the need to add a label into TFS.
Continue ReadingWe have some friends staying with us from out of town at the moment. They are actually friends of my parents - the type of people that were always around when I was growing up and I called my Aunt and Uncle even though they are not blood-relatives.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/TheMissingMergeContextMenu_13EDC/merge_options3.png) I'm currently busy with the merge functionality in Teamprise Version 2.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/WindowsLiveWriter/PintSizedTFSProxy_F31B/tfs_proxy%5B3%5D.jpg) I use Team Foundation Server over the end of a VPN connection to from my house in the UK over to Teamprise HQ back in Champaign, IL.
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Showing branch history in a visual way is not something that the current version 1.0 of the Microsoft Team Foundation Server client is great at. In fairness to the team, showing the branch history of files in an graphical way is pretty complicated and would involve many lines of code – especially when you build a...
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I know it only seems like a few moments have past since we released version 1.1 onto the unsuspecting public, but today we opened the doors a little on Version 2.0 as we start our 2.0 Preview Program.
Continue ReadingUPDATE: Brian Harry has posted a new utility to help you determine the trial expiration dates on your server. View Brian's post for more details. Like a lot of early adopters, we installed the Team Foundation Server 180–day trial edition so that we could use is right away while we were waiting for our TFS license key.
Continue ReadingI’ve just learnt something today from our resident tech-writer that I feel needs sharing. Apparently it is “old” to put two spaces after a full-stop (or “period” for you American’s out there). See the following articles for evidence:- http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html http://www.press.uchicago.
Continue ReadingThanks to the folks that dropped by the webcast early today. Hopefully it was ok – I found it very weird talking to the sheep in the field outside my house while all you folks were “out there”. Anyway, here are some links that I promised to people during the Q&A Session.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/teamprise2.png)[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/teamprise2.png)In a few hours, I’ll be getting on a flight to TechEd 2006 in Boston. If you are coming along then make sure to stop by the Teamprise booth and get a preview of Teamprise 2.0.
Continue ReadingThis tip is a follow up from my rather less helpful post “Don’t Do That” where I discussed the “Inherit security settings” option in the security settings tab for the Source Control Explorer when talking to Team Foundation Server.
Continue ReadingJust wanted to thank the good folks who attended my recent talks on source control with Team Foundation Server in Limerick and Galway. I had a fantastic welcome and enjoyed myself hugely. I revised the format slightly from earlier talks and so the slide deck (2.
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Thanks to everyone that came along to my talk at the 2006 Irish National Developers Conference yesterday. As it was Jedi Day, the session was appropriately aimed at being a deep-dive into some tips and tricks when using Team Foundation Server in the real world. As promised, here is the here is the slide deck (1.9 MB).
Continue ReadingIf you are going to be doing more than the basic check-in / check-out options then it pays to get to know the command line client – tf. The command line client is actually the most flexible and powerful client to Team Foundation Version Control. For more information, consult the MSDN help documentation.
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I’ve seen a few forum posts on this topic and talk about it a lot whenever meeting new users to Team Foundation Server so I thought it worthwhile posting on the subject.
Continue ReadingIf (like me) you are slowly getting hooked on MSH (or Monad), the James Manning’s latest post will interest you – an early implementation of a MSH Provider for Team Foundation Server Version Control allowing you to access the repository as if it were any other mapped drive. Sweet!
Continue ReadingWhile even it's own mother would admit that VSS has some issues, the one thing in it's favour is it's simplicity. You only need a file server to keep a VSS repository available and organisations have a lot of experience keeping file systems up and running.
Continue ReadingAs I have mentioned before, when you check out a file for edit in Team Foundation Source Control, you are actually telling the server that you are going to edit a particular version of a particular file that you have in your local workspace.
Continue Reading[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/blog/vsts_google_toolbar.jpg)Well, having tried new new beta of Google Toolbar I just had to try implementing my own toolbar button. Here is one that will give you the top previous posts from folks around the VSTS blogosphere.
Continue ReadingBuck Hodges recently posted about a problem with locks based on files types and shelving in VSTS Source Control. In the post he mentions a system called Gauntlet that is used internally in some teams at Microsoft. The Gauntlet system is very interesting to me.
Continue ReadingIt's probably obvious this one, but it took me a minute to figure it out. In VSTS source control, file version numbers do not go 1,2,3,4.. but they are versioned by the changeset number that the change was in.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/images/blog/tfs_properties_full.png)The source control system within Visual Studio Team System has a very powerful security model. One of the nice things is that if a user does not have read permissions on one of the objects in a tree, then that object is totally hidden from view - the...
Continue ReadingProblem: Use ssh tunnelling to access a Subversion repository using SSH tunneling (i.e. with a subversion repository url of svn+ssh://myservername/myrepo) using the Subclipse subversion integration with Eclipse. I tried various things and used each of the three interfaces for configuring Subclipse (Window, Preferences.
Continue ReadingOk, so I'm probably not the first or the last person to use that sentance. Anyway, Google Base is responding to requests. See the Google Blog post for more details. This could develop into a massive tagged, searchable repository or it could just be another Web 2.
Continue ReadingJust posted a reply to the VSTS Forums, but this is such a common question that I thought I'd post the response here in a place that Google is more likely to stumble across it. The problem is when somebody leaves a file checked out from Team Foundation Source Control (formally known as Hatterras).
Continue ReadingA friend of mine called Mike Becker just passed on a tip that I am now committed to passing on to as many people as I know. You ever needed access to the information in one of those annoying modal dialog boxes? Well now you can.
Continue ReadingI'm currently thinking a lot about different testing strategies. Martin Fowler has an intesting post entitled Mock Aren't Stubs in which he also discusses the differences between State testing and Interaction testing.
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[](http://www.woodwardweb.com/images/blog/1954Popularmechanics.html)Got forwarded this today, apparently from a 1954 Popular Mechanics magazine. "...how a 'home computer' could look like in the year 2004. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.
Continue ReadingI've recently come across Podcasting (or blogcasting as it is sometimes called). Basically it makes use of a feature in the RSS spec called enclosure that allows links to downloadable content - in this case audio content.
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