Is there a way or a tool to force users to write a comment to TFS every time a release of a project is created?
I am searching for something similar to the comments that are input when a file has been checked in to TFS, only for releases instead.
We are having a hard time keeping track of the changes made each time a new release is deployed and I imagine this would be a huge help in keeping track. I am currently using Visual Studio 2012.
What you're looking for is a release management solution, so you can automate and track your software as it's delivered through a pipeline from your dev environments up through to production environments.
You didn't specify what version of TFS you're using, but if you're using TFS 2013 or earlier, you can use the Release Management server. This software is being deprecated, however, so I wouldn't recommend starting out with it now unless you have absolutely no other choice.
In TFS 2015 Update 2, there is a fully integrated release management hub in TFS. This would be the recommended approach.
Related
We are a small development team working mostly on Visual Studio. Until recently, I was working from Office and we were using VSS for version control. Now, as I had to move to my native place, I am hundreds of miles apart from my team and I am using TFS Online to collaborate with the team. As the team is still working on VSS, there is always a problem when merging the codes from two different sources.
So, what I wanted to know is, what do you suggest for us.
Is there any tool that can help us achieve this?
Is it possible for us to use both TFS and VSS as version controls on a single machine for the project, so that a member can get the latest from VSS and checkin into TFS Online and vice-versa ?
Sorry for the naive question if it is, I am a noob.
P.S: Bosses dont want to spend on TFS Online licenses. :)
No it's not possible for the same Project / Solution to have different source control connection.
you could open 2 different solutions . i.e. the original on VSS and the copy on VSOnline and then manualy try and keep both solutions inline, but it would be a MANUAL Process.
As VSS is no longer supported in any way you should use the built in TFS tools to migrate all of your data to TFS on-premises.
Once there you can put TFS on http or https and access if just like VSO.
We currently use TFS to deploy builds to our servers in different environments such as QA, PreProd and Prod. In the current method, the build agent gets all latest from TFS, builds and publishes to whichever environment specified.
I know that you can actually just publish just to a drop folder where it creates PublishedWebsites folder, but how can you publish to servers from drop folder mentioning specific build? For example, there may be build #7, which our QA team has certified. We want to make sure that that is the build that is going to production and not latest content which might have some check ins from other team members.
Any help would be appreciated. I referred this link, but it is mentioning about overriding OutputRoot directory in publish.proj file, which is not created in the solution that we created using Visual Studio 2012.
http://www.asp.net/web-forms/tutorials/deployment/configuring-team-foundation-server-for-web-deployment/deploying-a-specific-build
You have multiple way of solving the needs.
The best option is to use LabManagement; it will take care of computing the correct Drop folder. See Using a Lab Environment for Your Application Lifecycle for details. The idea is to use the build-deploy-test workflow to deploy and run tests on a group of machines running Test Agent.
You can setup a more sophisticated process using Release Management, a new feature of TFS 2013 that you can add to 2012 as well. It offers to design your promotion process and control who authorizes deployments.
You should neither use Build or Lab Management to do deployments. Both are poor solutions for this as this is not what they were designed for.
Microsoft added a dedicated release management tool with visual studio 2013. I have configured and used it with both 2012 & 2013.
http://nakedalm.com/building-release-pipeline-release-management-visual-studio-2013/
This will be much easier than either of the other tools.
I am working with a small group of developers; we want the ability to be working on the same project at the same time over the internet. Is there a way to do this? I have read into Team Foundation Server but none of us have been successful in creating actual code files. Any suggestions? We are using Visual Studios 2012, C#.
As I pointed out in my comment, you can use Git or Subversion. I haven't used Visual Studio much lately, but you should be able to integrate Subversion with it pretty easily. I haven't tried Git with Visual Studio, but considering its popularity I bet it integrates rather easily also.
Both of them are means of source control. Subversion is a simpler interface with a smaller learning curve, but Git uses a distributed model and gives you finer control over the history and progress of your project. Git comes with some visualization tools (gitg, gitk, etc.). You can use a client like TortoiseSVN for Subversion.
Both of them support using external tools to compare files/projects (diffs), which is a bonus for most Windows users. You can use something like WinMerge for that.
That should be all you need :)
Mylyn is a task oriented plugin that allows for example to assign a set of files to a task. Is there a Mylyn type plugin for Visual Studio?
Tasktop has just announced that it is bringing the productivity of Mylyn into Visual Studio! The beta version that is being released will support bringing tasks from HP ALM, Quality Center, and Bugzilla. It includes Mylyn's Task List and Task Editor. The next level of support, which will include compatibility with all existing Mylyn connectors, will be delivered after this beta. Further down the road Tasktop will also be delivering context capture and focus within the Visual Studio IDE.
The beta release will be happening end of November 2010.
See the recent blog post for more details.
David Shepherd, Tasktop Technologies http://www.twitter.com/davidcshepherd
The closest I've found is Tasktop, by the people that created Mylyn, but it's a standalone application that doesn't integrate with Visual Studio.
(Resharper is irrelevant).
Not even close to mylyn, but here is an open source addin for visual studio that helps to assign a list of source files to a "session" (you could think of the session as a "task")
http://dsmaddin.codeplex.com/
i'm not aware of anything open source but i do know that team system is setup to support this type of workflow.
resharper might also have features you are looking for but, again, not foss
I asked that question to the VS.NET Development team in Teched 2008.
She said that they've notice about Mylyn, but are still looking on it.
Task focusing plugin is not yet ready in VS.NET environment.
You may be interested in this news from Tasktop: http://tasktop.com/blog/tasktop/eclipse-mylyn-microsoft-visual-studio
I'll second tasktop. The newest version especially looks nice. Like orip said, it doesn't provide VS integration, but there's a Firefox extension which should be pretty nice... beats using Eclipse purely for Mylyn.
I've recently released (commercial) Task Canvas extension for Visual Studio 2015 that supports tasks with assigned sets of documents and code fragments.
Does anyone use the MS SharePoint Solution Generator and VSeWSS 1.2 in a multi-developer environment with source safe? We are having issues re-deploying (because it doesn't really upgrade the solution with stsadm). It keeps saying the same feature is already installed - which it is, but it should retract the feature and re-install it - which it doesn't on some machines. Something is messed up with the feature's GUID but we can't find where that might be. One dev will be able to deploy and re-deploy but then the next dev won't. Where does VSeWSS 1.2 change the GUIDs? ARG!!!
We see the nice deployment targets (upgrade, etc) in STSDev but we're reluctant to use STSDev or the other codeplex tools because they are not supported by Microsoft. We have Visual Studio 2005 but not the money to upgrade to VS 2008 to get VSeWSS 1.3 - bummer.
---UPDATE----
I think we found a bug in VSeWSS that other's have commented on: Editing the projects properties resets some feature GUIDs.
It might also be a problem with the scope of the install. How do we get a site definition to install to the FARM scope in VSeWSS 1.2?
Don't worry too much about supported by Microsoft too much. While it is a consideration, the end result of MS SharePoint Solution Generator (terrible) and VSeWSS 1.2 are still SharePoint solutions and all solutions need to contain the same xml.
Could the deployment targets for STSDev be modified to work with your VSeWSS solution? After all, the deployment targets here are just working with STSAdm and a solution file.
In order to avoid the usual "works on my machine" you should set up a build and deployment system. If you are using virtual server or ESX server it should be fairly simply, and cheap as well. You should be able to use open source software all the way if you have more man power then money.
VSeWSS 1.2 and 1.3 store the feature GUID's in files in the /PKG directory of your Visual Studio solution. If you delete these files, or check our project into Source Control without these files and check them out on another machine, you will lose your GUIDs. Sure, VSeWSS will recreate the missing files for you, but it will do so with new GUIDs and new feature names.
A common requirement is to add the /PKG directory to your Visual Studio 2008 project and get it into source control.
You can read more about the files in the /PKG directory in the Release Notes for VSeWSS 1.3 here.
PS: We did some improvements to the Solution Generator in VSeWSS 1.3, but it wont generate a 100% perfect solution for you.