Interesting TFS statistics - the volume of files Microsoft is shoving at TFS.

bharry's WebLog : September TFS DevDiv Dogfood Statistics

55 Million files, 295 GB of compressed file data, 14.6 million Get operations, ...

I'm getting acquainted with TFS and Team Build for the first time. The first couple issues I've noticed, which brought up questions (and sometimes answers):

Where are the labels in the history?
bharry's WebLog : Why TFS labels aren't like SourceSafe labels
Finding the changes between 2 labels in TFS

Why is Team Build labeling AFTER the GetLatest step?
Here is an explanation of the labeling system. Basically the labeling system much more elaborate in TFS than in VSS (see above). You can label based on Latest Version, Changeset, Date, Label (why label based on another label?), and most importantly, Workspace Version. The latter labels the tree in TFS based on the collection of files that you have in your workspace! This means that during a Team Build, the latest files are retrieved from TFS, then those files are labeled. We tried a test here at work and proved that a check-in after the GET but BEFORE the label is NOT included in the label. We were unable to verify this ourselves by looking at the Label task in TeamBuild, but the assumption here is that the default for the label task is to label by "Workspace Version".

Does branching work any better in TFS than in VSS?
Preliminary accounts say yes. In VSS, branching gets hosed up because there is a tendency to share/link files across projects. In TFS, you can't share files. I tried a branch this afternoon and it worked great. You can branch based on the same things you can label on (Changeset, date, label, latest version, workspace version). You create the branch in the location of your choice. The real question is: how is the support for merging a branch back into the main line?

How do you build a specific label?
Override CoreGet task and use one or more Get commands. examples here.

How can I build solutions from / share code across multiple Team Projects?
The layout for this is much like I've done at a recent client. You have dependent/common assemblies in a separate team project. Those have a post-build step to copy their output to known/fixed directory. Referencing projects refer to this common code by their known / fixed directory relative to their location.

If the fixed references location is in another TFS project, you have to adjust the Team Build project file to get more than just the TFS project for the solution you're building. Here is a post that shows how to override the BeforeGet task.

Team Project with Shared Code


Where are all the default task elements (from the import file)?
\msbuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\TeamBuild

How do you "undo checkout" for another user?
use tf lock ... from command line. examples here.
tf status /user:* /server:tfs.myserver.com $/SomeProject/SomeFile.cs

How do you find files checked out by any user?
tf status /recursive /workspace:* /format:detailed /server:tfs.myserver.com $/SomeProject/SomeFile.cs

How do you pass login credentials on the command line?
... /login:user,password (login can contain domain\user)

More general Team System info at Vertigo's Team System blog. (we have actually partnered with these guys a few times on some projects)

Team Foundation Server FAQ

MSBuild Tutorials and Resources

• Web Deployment Projects and MSBuild
• Customizing msbuild
• Reference, team blog, hands-on-lab
• msbuildtasks home (suite of custom tasks, including IIS appPool mgmt, NDoc, NUnit, SqlServer exec, VSS support, xml/xslt, zip)
• MSBuild wiki on Channel9
  

Whenever I get around to cutting some WPF code, here's a decent writeup of what I'll need, where to get it, and what code I'll need.

Sam Gentile : Writing Your First Avalon Program on Windows Vista RC1

I can't remember when I first started noticing this pattern (maybe PDC last year?), and I know it's nothing new. I've been hearing more and more MS and related techies starting their sentences with SO... I've resigned myself to the realization that now ALL (ok most) MS employees do it, and now it's becoming more pervasive outside the MS camp. What's funny is that even in emails and IMs, it's written as the first word - proving that it's really ingrained as part of their speech pattern.

I've been conciously trying to avoid this pattern myself, and have succeeded so far. It's becoming more difficult now that it's leaked into our office here at IK. I wonder how much longer we have until it will die out or move on to another fad (or hopefully I don't subconciously start using it)?

Kirk Allen Evans' Blog : The Red Pill Affects Your Speech Patterns

...and from one of the comments to the above post: Channel 9 and MSDN

This might come in handy someday - all kinds of detailed info about how .NET version 3 sits alongside .NET 2.0, including version folders, registry keys, etc.

Whitepaper : Deploying Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.0

Tim Ewald points out that they created a web service to serve up content from MSDN programatically.

MSDN Content Web Services online...

Here's another post that's not necessarily exclusively .NET information. Nicholas Allen posts his "dirty dozen" blogs that he reads regularly. He has a good rule - he'll only have at most 12 blogs that he reads (bloggers come and go off his list), giving him a good mix of daily and periodic blogs to read.

Nicholas Allen's - My Blogging Dirty Dozen

I'm not sure when/if this will come in handy, but it just might :)

Sample code for setting up HttpListener. In this case, he's using it on the server side, and then sending WCF client calls to it -- to inspect what message arrives at the front door.

Using HTTP in System.Net

David Chappell wrote a whitepaper about human workflow (i.e. approving a document) and its support in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The Office SharePoint Server 2007 comes with out-of-the-box scenarios for workflow.

The client I just finished with has a need to do some "long running workflows" that involve human interaction. Rather than stuff this idea into WCF services, BizTalk, etc. -- it sounds like SharePoint Server might be a nice alternative.

Blog entry and whitepaper here.

We all know the WinFX platform has been out for a while, and we all know that it has now been renamed to .NET 3.0.

Here's an article by David Chappell that summarizes the .NET 3.0 technologies all together.

.NET Framework Developer Center: Introducing the .NET Framework 3.0