Agile SCM Talk

I have recently setup Lab Management (LM) in a production environment. LM is very feature rich and flexible. So, there are lots of ways to do things, which means it can be hard to figure out the best practice for your situation. Fortunately for me, Microsoft's Vijay Machiraju has provided me with some excellent guidance, which I will summarize here.

My overall goal is to be able to easily spin up a new build pool or deployment pool as needed by existing and new project teams. To achieve this, my approach is to:

TFS is just too much fun not to share. So, along with some of my TFS colleagues, we are organizing a local TFS User Group. Check us out.

TFS Austin User Group

Visit this group

I recently responded to concerns about TFS branching where "...when I delete files from my local workspace..." was part of the situation.

More than once since 2005 I've had developers come to me, red faced and exasperated because TFS was "using" incorrect versions of their files even though they had performed Get Latest. Without exception I found that they had also been moving, renaming or and deleting files in the local workspace via the file system.

This is a great procedure because you can tell instantly if changes are going to be picked-up or not. You don't have to wait for the cube to process. Here's the procedure for TFS 2010:

1. Make one or more of the following changes:
• Check in a changed file to source control.
• Update a work item.
• Publish a test result.
2. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and then click SQL Server Management Studio.
   

Here's what happens if you don't apply the hotfix as part of the upgrade...

"After upgrading to TFS 2010, one or more of the following symptoms may be exhibited:

• Labels that were created before the upgrade are missing files or folders.
• Labels could be entirely empty.
• The Merge wizard in Visual Studio does not display all valid merge targets for a given source path/branch.
• During merging, merge candidates are shown for changes that were already merged prior to the upgrade."

Great way to answer questions about who's doing what! Here's the 2010 version

You can use local or offline VS/TFS Process Guidance. However, then none of the convenient links from the Team Explorer and the Team Project SharePoint site work. Here's how you can fix that.

Starting with VS ALM 2010, Microsoft is using this HelpWare product. See http://helpware.net/mshelp3/intro.htm. What you have to do is update the ProcessGuidance.html files under Documents>Process Guidance (and there's another ProcessGuidance.html file in a subfolder as well) and the Quick Link. To get the link to work you must replace the leading portion of the URL with ms-xhelp:\\\?

I never did install RC as perf issues weren't a impediment for me. I upgraded a number of B2 environments. A few of which I describe below.

1. Windows 7 with VSTFS
I simply downloaded the ISO install DVD for VS 2010 Ultimate and Team Foundation Server; uninstalled VS and then uninstalled TFS. Then I installed VS 2010 for TFS and then Ultimate. No problems were encountered and everything worked fine.

2. WS08 SP2 x86 VM

This artile provides a summary of keynote and break out sessions I attended. Channel 9 coverage of the event is available here. Most of the new 2010 features were presented and demonstrated.

Monday Keynote – Visual Studio 2010 Launch

Here's a summary of TFS 2010 enabled improvement opportunities. This is based on my research and work with TFS 2010 to-date. Unlike a list of features, this information is organized around the typical work and tasks performed by software engineers.

Customer Management

• Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM software supports workflow integration between customer management and engineering

Requirements management