Adventures in Team System.

TFS 2010 Manage Branch Permission

TFS 2010 has the ability to set the "Manage Branch" permission which allows a user to create, edit, and delete branches.  One thing that tripped me up was creating a new branch.  When creating a new branch the user needs the "Manage Branch" permission on the source branch as well as the target folder where the new branch will live.

Team Build Events at TeamSystemLive.com

In May, TeamSystemLive.com will host 4 events, lead by William Bartholomew, to share his knowledge and experience using Team Build with the VSTS community.  William literally wrote the book on Team Build and has real world experience using and customizing the technology.

VSTS MVPs William Bartholomew, Omar Villarreal, and Chris Tullier will be answering questions during the 4 events centered around Team Build.  Please spread the word!

The first event is scheduled for Wednesday May 6th and is focused on WiX working with Team Build!

Here are the event topics:
1. WiX and Team Build Together At Last
2. Running Interactive Build Agents for UI Testing and Debugging
3. Building Reusable Build Definitions
4. Introduction to Team Build 2010

Visit the home page of http://www.teamsystemlive.com for more information.

VSTS Blogs

Thanks to Grant Holliday and VSTS MVP contributions, I have put together and will maintain a OPML file with all the active bloggers in the VSTS community.  You can get this file here

Team System Live Launched

Team System Live is now up and running!  The site is all about Live events covering Microsoft Visual Studio Team System.  We are providing the most comprehensive list of Team System Live events on the web as well as hosting a weekly chat session attended by a panel of experts to answer question from the community.  Check it out!

Custom Build Number - The best method I've seen seen

I posted about a simple way to customize your build number last month and although this method by Scott Allen still requires a custom build task, it is elegant and worth the effort.

January 2009 Dallas VSTS User Group Meeting

Join us next Wednesday evening, January 21 @ 18:00, for a presentation by me, Chris Tullier. I will be going over the new features coming in VSTS 2010 with an emphasis on the architecture, developer, and reporting capabilities.  If you weren't able to make it to PDC this year and you have yet to check out the presentation videos on Channel 9 you will want to be at this meeting!

Dallas VSTS Users Group. RSVP for the meeting here.

Build Number Customization - A Simple Technique

I have reviewed a few methods for changing from the default build numbering scheme that TFS uses (BuildDefintionName.Date.DailyIncrement).  Often teams prefer something closer to Major.Minor.PointRelease.Build (e.g. 2.4.1.344).  There is a great post that talks about accomplishing this here http://www.woodwardweb.com/vsts/000417.html

The Major, Minor, and PointRelease portions are manually changed but the Build portion is auto generated during the build process.  To accomplish this, techniques highlighted in the linked post above (also in the posts comments) rely on creating custom MS Build tasks, accessing a database, and/or checking in special purpose buildversion files into source control.  Some of us don't want the complexity and the more involved setup someone else in the future is going to have to understand to support the build number scheme.

With the goal of simplicity and a more descriptive build number, I have listed the MS Build script below that will make your build number (and automated label) look like BuildDefinitionName.Major.Minor.PointRelease.Build where Build equals a detailed date string (YearMonthDayHourMinuteSecondMillisecond) that includes milliseconds (e.g. MyTeamBuildSciptName.2.4.1.200812040930501111).

Yes the Build Number is longer which many will not like but it's a very descriptive number and is really easy to setup and understand.  I include milliseconds to virtually eliminate the possibility that people will build the same script at the same time thereby causing a name collision.

How it's done:

1. Download SDCTasks (http://www.codeplex.com/sdctasks) and extract the contents into C:\Program Files\MSBuild\SDCTasks.

2. Add an import statement in your build script

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\SDCTasks\Microsoft.Sdc.Common.tasks" />

3. Add the Major Minor and Point Release properties

...

<PropertyGroup>

    <!--  TEAM PROJECT

     This property is included only for backwards compatibility. The team project for a build 

     definition is now stored in the database. For compatibility with V1 clients, keep this property in 

     sync with the value in the database.

    -->

    <TeamProject>IGSProject</TeamProject>

    <VersionMajor>2</VersionMajor>

    <VersionMinor>4</VersionMinor>

    <VersionPointRelease>1</VersionPointRelease >

...

4. Add an override target to change the BuildNumber property.  Here we are using the Time.GetTime tasks included with the SDCTasks.

...

<Target Name="BuildNumberOverrideTarget">

    <Time.GetTime Format="yyMMddhhmmssffff">

      <Output TaskParameter="Time" PropertyName="customtimestamp" />

    </Time.GetTime>

    <PropertyGroup>      <BuildNumber>$(BuildDefinitionName)_V$(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(VersionPointRelease).$(customtimestamp)</BuildNumber>

    </PropertyGroup>

...

5. If you want to modify the date string format read this article for guidance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx

Requirement Test History and Overview Report (how to get it working)

During the software development process it's good to know how well tested your requirements are and if recent changes have caused previously complete requirements to stop functioning properly.  This is precisely what the "Requirement Test History and Overview Report" can tell us.  The graph below shows the number of requirements that have been tested for each build.  This report is available in the MSF for CMMI template.

However, getting the report to actually work is not straight forward hence this post.  Here is how to get it working:

1. Create some requirement work items

2. Create some software and a build script to build it

3. Run some local tests and associate the local test with the build you tested.  For example you might deploy a build to a Test server.  Then run a manual test that instructs you to go out to the test server web site and perform some tests. once you've finished the test you will get a test result.

4. Right Click a row in the test results window and select "Add to Work Item..."

5. You will be asked to publish the test result.  Click yes as this is required.

6. The next screen asks you to link your test result to a build.  Select the build that you tested against and click ok.

7. Now you need to select a requirement from your work items that the test validates.  I selected a query called Product Requirements and clicked Find.  Then I highlighted a Requirement from the list and clicked ok.

8.  You can repeat these steps to associate more test results to requirements.  The graph will show that a requirement failed for a build if 1 or more test results failed.

Blog Migration

I'm moving my Blog over to Typepad because of the not so great experience trying to keep up my own Community Server blog (great software btw, just not interested in the hassles of medium trust hosting).  I'm manually moving over the posts from the old blog so the URLs will change but the content will all be there.

Dallas VSTS User Group November Edition

This month Ed Blankenship from Infragistics will be presenting new features of VSTS 2010 at the Dallas VSTS User Group (dallasvsts.com).  Just back from PDC Ed has alot of exciting new features to show, see below for Details, you don't want to miss this one!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 @ 6 PM (Entry fee is $2)
 
Join us next Wednesday evening, November 19 @ 18:00, for a presentation by Ed Blankenship.  Ed will be going over the new October release of the Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools as well as the new features coming in VSTS 2010.  If you weren’t able to make it to PDC this year and you have yet to check out the presentation videos on Channel 9 (see links to the right), you will want to be at this meeting!
 
Ed is the Release Engineering Manager at Infragistics and a Microsoft Visual Studio Team System MVP.  He is also a technical evangelist for Smart Client applications (primarily Windows Forms & Windows Presentation Foundation.)
 
Ed has been a technical editor for the Wrox Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 2.0 Developer's Guide, and Silverlight 2.0 Bible books, author of numerous articles, and has spoken at various user groups, events, and conferences.  He is a resident of Dallas, Texas and also a graduate of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.
 
This meeting will be held Microsoft office in Las Colinas (7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX 75039.)  Visit our home page for directions and please remember the $2 entry fee.