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.

I spent hours to solve this problem…

My customer has VB6 SP5, we installed Team Explorer 2008, MSSCCI provider…and nothing! I started the VB6 IDE, but I cannot find any source control or Team Foundation menu’s.

Then I found this thread.

The Solution:

Add the line:

vbscc=1

To c:\windows\vbaddin.ini

Then restart VB6, and you get a new menu item: Tools, Team Foundation.

Many customers ask me the same question: does Expression Blend can talk with Team System / Source Control?

The answer, unfortunately, is no. Blend does not have the ability to use a source control repository and actually strips out any source control binding it finds in a project file.

Paul Hacker and Dave McKinstry have started a virtual Team System user group. The user group will use Live Meeting for demos and talks, holding the social side of the user group meeting over in Second Life.  For more information and to register visit: http://www.tsug-ve.com/

The first meeting will be held on September 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM SLT.

For the meeting time in other time zones, click here.

We always asked for a library of process templates available and also easy way to share ones we created.

Templex is a new CodePlex project has just been created for this purpose.

From the project’s page:

This CodePlex projects serves as a repository for open source Team Foundation Server (TFS) process templates, work item type definitions and report definitions. TFS uses process templates to configure new team projects. Each process template includes the following:

• TFS Security groups and permissions
• Initial set of Areas and Iterations
• Work item type definitions
• Initial set of work items
• Work item querys
• MS Project Mappings
• Version control permissions and settings for check-out and check-in
• Project portal document library settings, including an initial set of documents
• SQL Reporting Services report definitions

Once a team project is created, the following configuration items can be imported, exported and modified:

• Work item type definitions
• Work item queries
• Report definitions

http://www.codeplex.com/templex

Microsoft announce the public release of a new developer tool -  Source Analysis for C#.

Inside Microsoft this tool’s name is StyleCop and it enforces code style guidelines on the code we write

Source Analysis comes with a set of default rules analyzers covering approximately 200 best practice rules. These rules are full compatible with the default layout settings in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

Specifically, these rules cover the following, in no particular order:

• Layout of elements, statements, expressions, and query clauses
• Placement of curly brackets, parenthesis, square brackets, etc
• Spacing around keywords and operator symbols
• Line spacing
• Placement of method parameters within method declarations or method calls
• Standard ordering of elements within a class
• Formatting of documentation within element headers and file headers
• Naming of elements, fields and variables
• Use of the built-in types
• Use of access modifiers
• Allowed contents of files
• Debugging text

After installation, Source Analysis can be run from within the Visual Studio IDE. You can set this up to be run as a part of your build process as documented here. Since this is plugged in as a MsBuild project you can use it in as a part of Team Foundation Build process as well.

Running Source Analysis:

And the results are:

Download it from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis

Read full details:http://blogs.msdn.com/sourceanalysis/archive/2008/05/23/announcing-the-release-of-microsoft-source-analysis.aspx

This is the first post in a series I’m writing about Rosario’s tidings.

The first taster will be about the new enhancements in the Source Control area.

So, what’s new there?

• 
  

  Editable source location field

this enables us to navigate to other place in the tree easier, also copy this location.

• 
  

  Last checkin column

we don’t need to open the history in order to know when the file was checked-in.

• 
  

  Hyperlinks to local working folders

great feature - click on this link opens the local mapped folder .

• 
  

  Simplified workspace mappings

  • Now you can  cloak folders from the mappings
  • Mapping a folder from the source control itself without opening the workspace manager.

Map to local folder:

Cloak folder:

• 
  

  A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer

We can add files from the tree and a wizard is opened. The wizard helps us to map a folder if it’s not mapped and even exclude items.

• 
  

  Enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window

• 
  

  New history view that shows labels applied to a file

What version of TFS do you have? The full edition? Workgroup edition? or maybe Trial edition?

To answer this question, open your registry (Start–>Run–>regedit.exe) and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Registration

Note: If you have TFS 2005, replace the 9.0 with 8.0

You will find in this key a value named Edition_CT. This value is a string that indicates the edition you have. (This text equivalent to the encrypted key of the Edition value)

Available values:

• Trial
• Workgroup
• Full (The standard edition)

Do you want to delete TFS’s global list? forget about it! I’m serious. you can’t! read here.

If you want, you can delete values from this list itself .

Conclusion:

Think before you create a global list! design your work items and needs. You and your global list will be together for a long time.

If you interested in influencing the next version of VSTS, the product team has released a new set of specifications for the upcoming release of Visual Studio, code named Rosario. These are provided to the community to allow us the opportunity to provide feedback and thereby helping shape the next release .If you are interested in submitting feedback, visit the public feedback area.

New Specs:

• TFS Bug Submission Portal
• Send Mail from TFS
• Core Linking Work Item Tracking

Previous Specs:

• Add to Source Control
• History Improvements
• Improved Label Dialog
• Resolve Improvements