Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Since I joined Microsoft Belux last year I've been thinking about moving my blog to MSDN. But ever since I didn't really saw the added value of moving my blog as both sites are using the same platform:
CommunityServer. But since a couple of weeks I've heard a lot of very positive feedback on the recently deployed 2.0 version of
CommunityServer that powers the
MSDN and
TechNet blogger sites. So far the experience is far better than on DonNetJunkies. Today I finally decided to move my blog to
http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/. I want to thank
Donny for hosting my blog since August 2004.
So please subscribe to my new blog on the MSDN blogs:
Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you will continue to do so at http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/default.aspx!
Where earlier this week Soma announced that TFS will ship in March, Jeff Beehler now announces that the .iso images of the Release Candidate build of TFS will be on the MSDN download center next week.
"The CD images have been handed off to the team that handles the uploads to the MSDN download center and according to current estimates, we should have bits available for download sometime on Tuesday, February 7th."
So for the Europeans expect TFS RC to be available on MSDN on February 8th!
When I was still a consultant I was a strong advocate of using unit tests and code coverage to make sure the code, and the application afterwards, reached the appropriate quality level to be deployed. As Team System and Team Foundation Server weren't available - not even in CTP or beta - at that time, I used a number of well-known community-driven tools like NUnit, MBUnit, NCover, NAnt, NDoc, etc.
One of the great add-in's in Visual Studio at that time was NUnitaddin. Jamie Cansdale developed the TestDriven.NET addin. Today Jamie announced the availability of code coverage together with unit testing for all versions of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite. He bundled NCoverExplorer with TestDriven.NET to view the code coverage results.
So far I haven't tried these tools out, but I assume they play well together and offer you the same kind of unit test/code coverage functionality as you can get with Visual Studio 2005 but for all versions of Visual Studio 2005. So no excuses anymore to not unit test and test the code coverage of your classes!
Soma announced on his blog today that Team Foundation Server will ship in March. Team Foundation Server is the cornerstone of the Visual Studio 2005 Team System. More info on TFS can be found on http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/newfeatures/default.aspx. Check the impressive list of the new features!
I know a couple of ISVs who will be very happy with this news. They have been using TFS and Team System since a couple of months and are well prepared to move to the RTM version. This blog post "Preparing to upgrade to RTM", dating from the Team System launch timeframe, can be put in practice now.
Creating an offline work list in Microsoft Excel from Team Foundation Server is relatively easy. However lately I've had some customers using the VPC of the MSDN Subscriber Downloads complaining about an error. The error message box that pops up says "TF84041: Microsoft Office does not have the language pack installed …".
Well the good news is that it's a known issue with the VPC (and other VPCs), the bad that it's not solved yet in the VPC. Hopefully it will be solved in the next VPC (Visual Studio 2005 RTM + TFS Beta 3 Refresh) that will be released in the next couple of weeks.
There are two possible solutions:
- install the MUI pack in order to get this working in Beta 3. It's caused by an unfortunate Excel bug to do with some of the APIs we use not correctly passing Locale IDs.
- create a '1033' directory under <program files>\microsoft office\office11 (if it doesn't already exist). Copy Excel.exe into the 1033 directory and rename it to xllex.dll.
The steps to create an an Offline Work List goes than as follows:
- Open Microsoft Excel from the Start Menu
- Microsoft Excel, from the Work Items menu, select New List
- In the “Connect to Team Foundation Server” dialog, select VSTSRC1 from the drop-down
- Make sure AdventureWorks is selected in the “Team projects” list and click OK
- Select the Work Items tab
- Select Query
- From the query dropdown, select My Work Items
- Click Run
- Click OK
- Create a new folder on the hard drive: C:\MyFolder
- Save your Excel workbook as C:\MyFolder\MyTasks.xls
- Close Excel
- Close Visual Studio
The integration of Team Foundation Server with Microsoft Project and Microsoft Office applications allows project managers to use the tools they already know and like to immediately start taking advantage of Team Foundation Server features like Work Item Tracking. This completely eliminates the learning curve associated with the adoption of new tools.
The last couple of days I've been closely working with a Microsoft Partner with an ISV/Software Solutions Competency on the migration of their Rational ClearQuest entities to Team Foundation Server. To safely move all the ClearQuest assets we have been using the CQConverter.exe utility. The CQConverter.exe utility (and its .config file) is part of TFS and can be found in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE folder.
A well-documented walkthrough "Walkthrough: Migrating ClearQuest Work Items to Team Foundation" on how to migrate ClearQuest Work Items to Team Foundation can be found on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181248.aspx. Actually after you have prepared the migration the hardest work is done. The major steps are:
- Configure the migration process: edit the configuration files to guide the migration process.
- Analyze your ClearQuest database: run the ClearQuest converter to analyze your current ClearQuest database. The analysis produces a report and a set of files that describes the work items present in ClearQuest.
- Define the migration mapping: edit the XML files generated during the ClearQuest Database analysis to customize the migration process.
- Migrate your ClearQuest database to Team Foundation work item tracking: use the configuration and mapping files generated during the analysis of the database to migrate your data.
- Review the migration report: discover the cause of any errors and warnings encountered during the migration, and review the migration status.
Despite the steps listed above look relatively easy, we struggled with some security issues and a compatibility issue between the CQConverter.exe utility and the ClearQuest client.
When executing CQConverter.exe I received the following error: "TF61016: The user "username" is not a member of 'Service Accounts group' ". However trying to add the user to the Service Accounts Group (through the Team Explorer) the Add button is grayed out; so there's no way to add the user to the Service Accounts Group. This issue is also listed on the "Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta 3 Refresh Known Issues" page. But I don't think the answer is really clarifying. So after some investgation it turns out that it's "by design" that CQConverter.exe must be run from a user account that is part of ‘Service Accounts’ group on TFS. The logical steps are:
- figure out the user account from which the converter will be run.
- open Visual Studio Command Prompt.
- execute the following command: tfssecurity.exe /g+ "service accounts" /server:http://:
Why is this by design?
Well, the converter puts data from CQ into TFS. There may be rules in TFS that may cause that data to change.
E.g. if there is a rule that says CreatedDate should be the current date, or the CreatedBy field should be the user creating the bug.
The converter replays out the user action in TFS to migrate the bug.
E.g. if a bug went through active, resolved, close cycle then converter first opens a new bug in TFS, then resolves it and then closes it. You can see that this would create a problem with all the rules because CreatedDate would be set to the date the converter ran, loosing out the original date, and CreatedBy would be set to the user account running the converter.
So the converter runs in a mode where it bypasses those rules. The APIs exposing that functionality were deemed to be dangerous to be left open for normal users so the decision was made that only service account people would have access to those.
Another issue I faced is: "TF61103: The converter could not find the supported version of the ClearQuest client". The ClearQuest Client used is Rational ClearQuest MultiSite with BuildID 2003.06.13.402.000. Though this version is supported it turned out that it depends on the availability of the registry key HKCU\SOFTWARE\\Rational Software\\ClearQuest. So check if that key is available!
The ClearQuest Standalone client Version 2003.06.XX, where XX is the minor version is supported. In the Microsoft labs they have also done testing on 2003.06.12 versions of ClearQuest.
Versions 2002.05.20 and 2003.05.00 may also work, but have not been tested.
After solving these issues we were able to do a first test and get our ClearQuest entities migrated to Team Foundation Server work items. I'm pretty confident that at release time of TFS this tool will be of much use for migrating to Team Foundation Server!
Now that I've installed Team Suite (RTM) and Team Foundation Server (Beta 3 Refresh) on my TabletPC, the long awaited VPC with Team Suite RC and Team Foundation Server Beta 3 (finally) found its way to MSDN Subscriber Downloads.
The VPC also includes the well-known AdventureWorks demo: To access the demo files, open the solution (.sln) file located in the C:\AdventureWorksDemo folder. The sample code is intended to demonstrate features of Visual Studio Team System, and therefore may exhibit poor coding conventions, security vulnerabilites, etc. The AdventureWorks application should not, and may not, be used in any form for production applications.
The ISVs I'm currently working with on the adoption of Team System should absolutely consider using this VPC for their learning process. Migration of the sources and SQL Server 2005 data to the RTM & Beta 3 Refresh (another VPC coming in the next few weeks) will be smooth.
For more information on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, please visit:
Before the weekend - during the Launch 2005 week - eWeek.com announced that Microsoft continue to support the use of agile development methodologies, such as extreme programming and Scrum, to revise its products faster. Read the full article "Microsoft Lauds 'Scrum' Method for Software Projects".
Today eWeek publishes the article "Microsoft Taps Former Rational Heavyweight to Lend Credence to Enterprise Tools Play ". Indeed, Ivar Jacobson, known as one of the fathers of the popular Rational Unified Process (RUP), will lead an effort to deliver a lightweight unified process to the Microsoft Solutions Framework. Jacobson agrees on the fact that RUP is heavyweight and needs some refactoring.
"RUP is one of my babies, and babies grow up, and some of them need correction."
It's great to see that Microsoft is working hard to bake process within the software development environment through Visual Studio Team System. This means that in the near future we'll be able to use a kind of UP based on the Microsoft Solutions Framework integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Or as Jacobson says: "We build a fresh new process architecture based on aspect-oriented ideas, and using the MSF and VSTS is a very good platform to instantiate such a process."
Read the full article "Microsoft Taps Former Rational Heavyweight to Lend Credence to Enterprise Tools Play" at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1886531,00.asp".
Kirk Allen Evans aggregated some frequently asked questions from the MSDN Forums, answered by Ajay Sudan, Product Manager for Visual Studio Team System...
Q: I am an MSDN Universal Subscriber; why can't I see any of the role-based products or Team Suite in the MSDN Subscriber Downloads Center?
A: You have not yet submitted a transition request. You must transition from MSDNU to one of the role-based products or upgrade to the Suite. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions for more information.
Q: How long does the transition request take?
A: For a retail subscriber it will take 24-48 hours from transition choice to access the new level/role. For a Volume Licensing admin to assign a role choice and then the user to get download access should be nearly instantaneous.
Q: If I install Team Suite after installing VS Pro, do I need to uninstall VS Pro?
A: No, the two products live side-by-side. There is only one devenv.exe and it will launch the higher SKU. In this case, Suite is launched.
Q: Can I upgrade from Team Suite trial to the full version of Team Suite?
A: Yes, the trial will go into maintenance mode and give you the option to upgrade.
Q: If I use the Team Suite trial, what happens if I then install a role-based product?
A: The Suite trial will continue to launch since it is considered the higher SKU. The trial edition will need to be uninstalled before you can use a role-based product.
Q: I am a Microsoft partner. Can someone please tell me what is going on?
A: Partner program benefits will be communicated through your partner channels. In the meantime, you can see the most recent communication from the partner team here: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40018086?PS=3. We're hearing your feedback and I will personally relay your comments to the appropriate individuals.
With the availability of the RTM versions of the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 I decided to install the Team Suite edition natively on my laptop. The uninstall of previous versions and the install of the RTM version went very smooth.
If you have installed previous versions of Visual Studio 2005, such as Beta 1 or Beta 2, make sure to run the auto-uninstall tool. You can of course also manually uninstall without using the tool, but note that you have to uninstall all Visual Studio 2005 product editions before you uninstall the .NET Framework 2.0. The tool will uninstall all pre-release Visual Studio 2005 editions such as Visual Studio Express, Visual Studio Team System, Professional, and Standard edition. More Pre-RTM Uninstall Instructions can be found on http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/uninstall/preRTMuninstall/default.aspx.
Yesterday and today I compiled almost all of my demo projects and samples to the RTM build of the .NET Framework. So far I haven't ran into any big issues. Next projects on the list to be recompiled are the projects with dependencies on Team Foundation Server. It looks like I need the Beta 3 Refresh to get started with that!