New tool was released on CodePlex called TFS Check-in Validation Tool.

This tool provides the ability to have a checkin validating by a build prior to being checked in.  This is similar to a feature in TFS 2010 called Gated Checkin, which is integrated into VS and TFS (more info in this video). With both of these the goal is to prevent build breaks from being checked in by validating them beforehand.

If you really like it and are interested in doing something similar with TFS 2008 (before TFS 2010) comes out, you can check out this new project on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/BuddyBuild.

It is not a part of TFS and the implementation is unrelated to the TFS 2010 Gated checkin feature.

Buck Hodges has created a great post on this commonly issue here.

Version 2.2 for TFS 2008 is out:

• Task Board for Team system has hit Gold Master and is coming out of Beta
• Task Board for Team System now supports SfTS 1.2 on TFS 2005

Version 2.2 of the free process template is now available for download:

http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/download.aspx?key=A23E296BA97DA7410F496F650C41AC26&site=UK&version=v2.2

Version 2.2 supports:

• TFS 2008 / TFS 2008 SP1
• SQL Server 2005 / SQL Server 2008
• WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007

It features a new "Report Flicker Mode", a velocity report, ten new engineering focussed report along with numerous bug fixes, performance tweaks and other enhancements.

Task Board for Team System hits Gold Master:

http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/TaskBoardBeta/Default.aspx

RadioTFS is going to be doing a series of shows on the new Features in Visual Studio Team System 2010 – In this edition they catch up with Habib and the developer features!

Habib is a Lead Program manager on the VSTS Development group.  His main responsibilities include the Visual Studio debugger, profiler, code coverage and pretty much anything related to troubleshooting and diagnosing applications.  He joined Microsoft in 2000 and has been in Developer Division ever since.  Before joining Microsoft, Habib studied computer science at the Australian National University in Canberra.  While not at work, Habib spends his time playing with robots, shooting hoops or chasing that elusive Yellowfin.  One of his favorite possessions is a Washington state license plate with the label "RUNTIME".

When MSBuild was first released, it was seen as a stopgap measure. Prior to its introduction, building a non-trivial .NET project from the command line was a daunting challenge. Either command line options have to be carefully laid out or third-party libraries like NAnt have to be brought in.

Recently MSBuild Extension Pack was released on CodePlex. Run by Mike Fourie and a team of 5 developers, this successor to FreeToDev MSBuild Extensions has over 170 different tasks for MSBuild. Many of these tasks support a MachineName argument allowing the actions to be performed on a remote machine.

The team summarizes the tasks into these categories:

• System Items: Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound
• Code: Assemblies, CAB Files, Code Signing, File Detokenisation, GUID’s, Mathematics, Strings, Threads, Zip
• Applications: BizTalk 2006, Email, IIS7, MSBuild, SourceSafe, StyleCop, Team Foundation Server, Visual Basic 6, WMI

The next meeting of the Israeli ALM UG will be focused on VSTS/TFS extensibility.

Save as Outlook Appointment:

VSTS is a great ALM platform. One of the main advantages of VSTS is it’s API which gives us the ability to write tools to make our daily work more productive.

We will talk about what parts and how we can customize and extensible VSTS.

The agenda:

17:30 - 18:00 : Assembly

18:00 - 18:45 : Part 1 - TFS API fundamentals

18:45 - 19:00 : Break

19:00 - 19:45 : Part 2 - Hands-On & code samples

Please register here.

The lecturer:

Shmulik Segal works as ALM group manager in Sela Group. Shmulik is a software engineer with rich and varied technical experience. In the past 3 years Shmulik assimilate many TFS projects and has proved experience in writing tools to VSTS.

For a preview of the next TFS Power Tools release, please read Brian Harry’s blog.

The next version is really amazing!

From Brian’s post:

There are 3 major new components to the October Power Tools release and the usual incremental improvements.

• Team Members - We’ve added a new node to the Team Explorer called "Team Members".  It appears under each Team Project and is used to identify who are the people who work on the project.  It serves as a "pivot point" for information about and operations on people and teams.
• Windows Shell Extension - We’ve built a Windows shell extension that allows you to do the core version control operations directly inside the Windows Explorer without using the Team Explorer.
• PowerShell Support - We’ve started working on a PowerShell pipeline and commandlets for TFS.  Our initial set support basic version control operations but over time we plan to add work item tracking, administration, build and more.

This is one of the best Power Tools releases so far.

Read Brian’s post for full details.

There are few emails that one will receive in his lifetime that will render him completely speechless. I am delighted to find out that I have been awarded with 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award.
This is the email I received:

Subject: Congratulations 2009 Microsoft MVP!

Dear Maor David,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others.

I am really very excited and I want to take this opportunity to thank the community that supported me over the past year. Special thanks goes to Guy Burstein who has nominated me for the MVP program. Off course I’d like to thank to my company – SRL, that encourage excellence and sharing the knowledge with the community.

My MVP Profile page: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Maor.David-Pur

Thanks!!!

In today’s press release titled: “Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Overview” MS also announced the merge of the Developer Edition and Database Edition SKU’s.

From Gert’s post:

What does this mean?

In the next release of Visual Studio Team System we will be merging the feature sets of the Development Edition and the Database Edition into a single product. The new product – part of Visual Studio Team System codename “Rosario” – will include all of the features in the Development Edition and the Database Edition as well as new capabilities delivering even more value in a single product. This will provide a more complete set of capabilities for building software in today’s data-driven environments. Bringing these two feature sets together enables you to take advantage of the core tools for application development as well as the necessary tools for database development, including performance profiling, code analysis, code metrics, code coverage, database refactoring, Schema Compare, Data Compare, and more.

As an MSDN subscriber we want you to realize the benefit of this merged feature set now, which is why we are extending this exclusive offer. If you have either the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with MSDN Premium subscription or the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition with MSDN Premium subscription, on October 1, 2008 you will have access to both the Development Edition and Database Edition through MSDN Subscriber Downloads. This change also applies to customers who purchased Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers with MSDN Premium Subscription and Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database Professionals with MSDN Premium Subscription.

Microsoft has officially named the Visual Studio Team System Code-name ‘Rosario’ suite of tools to “Visual Studio Team System 2010” in an announcement on 29-Sep-2008.  They have also posted information on MSDN and Channel 9.

The 2010 release will be a huge step forward for the tools in the ALM space. The new architect tools look great, the build system will be improved, the tools for project management will (finally) get support for hierarchical structures, test management… The list just goes on and on…

The complete announcement can be found here.

And Brian Harry of course has some more to add about this in this post.

Here are some links to the announcements, feature sets, goodies and articles:

• Microsoft PressPass - Microsoft Unveils Next Version of Visual Studio and .NET Framework
• Brian Harry’s Blog - Shining the Light on Rosario
• MSDN - Visual Studio Team System 2010 Overview
• MSDN - Visual Studio 2010 and the .Net Framework 4.0 Overview
• Channel 9 - Norm Guadagno: Announcing Visual Studio Team System 2010
• Channel 9 - Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9!

Brian Harry also posted also that there would be another CTP this fall.