hamang.net

The near future of TFS

Brian Harry who is the responsible manager for Team Foundation Server is blogging about upcomming features and fixes to TFS. It seems promising, but they should definetly release is soon, as a lot of people are waiting for the release. In particular the features of the Orcas version seems very welcome. I hope they will arrive sooner that soon.

Take a look at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2006/11/30/team-foundation-server-roadmap.aspx

› Continue reading

Tags: TFS

Team System widgets

Accentient has a really nice list of Widgets for team System. Here you will find links to useful tools like the TFS Administration Tool, the TFS Power Pack and useful plugins like the Must Have Comments Check-in Policy. The list is growing, which is a good thing, because TFS has some missing functionalities, but you will probably find the missing parts on the list.

The LCD-TV integration is also listed, which is really cool

Check it out on: http://accentient.com/widgets.aspx

› Continue reading

Tags: TFS

Presentasjonen fra NNUG [in Norwegian]

Takk for et fantastisk bra oppmøte i går. Mulig det var pga. Halloween og at folk følte seg truet til å komme . Beklageligvis ble det fullt, og forståelig nok ville ikke brannansvarlig la folk sitte i midtgangen, så desverre måtte noen av de påmeldte deltakerne snu i døra. Totalt sett var det 140 påmeldte og det var plass til ca. 100 i auditoriet.

Uansett, her er presentasjonen jeg holdt i går. Hvis du skal kjøre Continuous Integration, så er det bare å laste ned eksemplet som jeg har lagt ut i denne artikkelen. Gjerne legg inn kommentarer hvis noe er uklart, så skal jeg forsøke å svare på det så godt jeg kan.

› Continue reading

Tags: TFS

[Updated] Continuous Integration using an LCD-TV

You have probably seen examples of doing CI (Continuous Integration) using lamps. Shortly explained, the idea is that when the build breaks, the red lamp is turned on and when the build is OK, the green lamp is turned on. It's a pretty cool feature, so I thought of moving this idea a step further! Lamps are for dinosaurs

I have already implemented CI using the excellent example in Khushboo's blog. It's implemented with Team Foundation Server RC. The setup with the LCD-TV can be used in any CI environment, the idea is the same. Every time a developer checks in code, the build process is triggered. The display on the LCD-TV is just a custom website displaying the status of the build-server. The website has an auto-refresh (every 5th second or so) to get the latest status. When building, the screen turns yellow, and when the build fails, the screen turns red. The screen is green when everything is OK.

Here are some screens from our setup:

The OK screen:

The Build screen:

The Failed build screen:

The setup:

The setup is quite simple actually, you need the following items:

• A huge LCD-TV (at least 37" to make the people in the back happy)
• A laptop/PC/server to connect the LCD-TV. This will serve as a client.
• The FireFox browser (it supports blinking text , IE don't)
• A website that displays the result of the process. Should probably be installed on the build server.

and of course, you need a Project Leader that sees the point in investing a couple of bucks in a good development environment. It's not a simple task, but at least it's worth it. The quality of the code will definitively be better and the status of the build is very visible for the project team. My experience is that the red screen is not red for long, especially when your face is on it

Server setup:

• Install TFS Build Service on server
• Install VS 2005 Team Suite or VS 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers (code analysis/fxCop) + VS 2005 Team Edition for Testers (Code Coverage)on server
• Install VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects on server for deployment possibilities. Only needed for web projects, though.
• Create WebSite for CI (for instance http://[tfsserver]:8090). Use code in ci.zip (download further down on this page). Use the same AppPool as TFS (TFS AppPool)
• Configure web.config for CI
• Run the following command on server: “%programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup\BisSubscribe.exe /eventType CheckinEvent /address http://[tfsserver]:8090/service/WebService.asmx  /deliveryType Soap /domain http://[tfsserver]:8080”
• Check in the following table in SQL server that the subscription is registered: tfsintegration.dbo.tbl_subscription

Possibilities

Ok, you really don't need a LCD-TV to show a red or green screen. But, it's the information that is important. You could for instance display burn down charts, code quality, test result etc. when the screen is green. And how about a blue screen (no, not a BSoD) when the standup meeting is supposed to start (to get the team members attention). There are a lot of possibilities with this setup.

(update) Install and setup

Well, people, here is the source code.

The Webapplicaiton includes the status screen as well as the CI example in Khushboo's blog (a little modified, but mostly the same). Install the webapplication as a new Web Site in IIS (with a different port) on the build server (in my environment, I am running the build and tfs services on the same server). The status screen is using the TFS API instead of the webservices, so all DLL's need to be installed on the server running the status screen application. It should be possible to use the webservcies as well, if this setup doesn't suite you.

A couple of things:

• Remember to trigger the checkin event described in Khushboo's blog. The WebServcie is included in the web application in the CI code package. it's located in the Service folder.
• Remember to set the correct Application pool for the web application. It should be the same pool as for the TFS web application (TFS AppPool or similar)
• Use FireFox as the browser on the client machine connected to the TV. If you remove the standard toolbars and hit F11 the status page will fill the whole screen, which is really nice. It also supports blinking text.
• Do anything you wan't with the code and use it as you like, I don't care, but I'm interested in any cool changes you do to it, maybe it could be an Open Source project in the future.
• Don't spam me with support issues. Please post them in this blog, maybe we can figure it out together.

Good luck!

Feel free to come with ideas and feedback of the setup.

› Continue reading

Tags: TFS

Team Foundation Server licensing model

I have used Team Foundation Server Beta 3 refresh and RC for a while. The product has many of the same functionalities as CruiseControl.NET and nUnit, except that you get a complete package of tools and templates integrated with Visual Studio. Ok, that's fine, I actually like tightly integrated tools (when they work as expected), but how about licensing?

Ok, for you guys that have installed TFS and uses Continuous Integration or doing manual/nightly builds with the integrated build system, you have probably configured testing and code analysis for the build. But then you get some server errors, right?

Typical errors are:

In order to perform Code Analysis on managed binaries, MSBuild needs to launch FxCop. MSBuild is unable to locate the FxCop binaries. Make sure Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers or Visual Studio Team Suite is installed and run MSBuild from within the "Visual Studio Command Prompt" or specify the path to FxCop by setting the FXCOPDIR environment variable."

The installation documentation does not state that you have to install FxCop or Visual Studio 2005 for Developers on the machine. Well, anyway, you decide to fix the issue and installs Visual Studio 2005 for Developers. The errors goes away!

Then you start exploring with WebTesting and Load Testing, which are cool features in Visual Studio 2005 for Testers. But, again, you get some new errors:

C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\TeamBuild\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets : warning : TestTypes\{37e36796-fb51-4610-8d5c-e00ceaa68b9f} could not be loaded because the TIP could not be instantiated for the following reason(s): Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.LoadTestPackage, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
….

Hmmm…this seems odd, I can't do load testing on the build server. Again trying to solve this issue, I installs Visual Studio 2005 for Testers on the Build Server. But, how about licensing? Do I need a new license to run my tests ? Well, not really. The Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System Licensing states the following:

"As part of the build process, Team Foundation Server may run quality tests and/or analysis on the precompiled or compiled code. These tests rely on functionality found within Team System client products, typically within the Team Edition for Software Developers or Team Edition for Software Testers products. These products may be installed on the build machine by licensed users of those products, as long as they are not directly used by any individuals who are not licensed for those products. Team Foundation Server will gather results of the build as well as any quality tests or analysis and deposit them in the Team Foundation Server data repository."

In my team, only 1 person has the complete Team Suite, as it's quite expensive. We get Visual Studio 2005 for Developers through our partner program with Microsoft (Gold partner). In real life this means, it's OK to install VS 2005 Team Suite (or for Testers) on the Build server as long as one Team member has the license. But, the other team members cannot log on to the server and use the Team Suite to configure the build process. The license is personal, meaning that the person who has the license, can install it anywhere and do whatever he/she want's with it.

Still wondering wheter TFS is worth the license, as you can achieve the same results with OpenSource software, but with not so integrated tools. I would say, that if you have a license with Team Suite, go ahead and configure the TFS environment, if not go OpenSource.

A couple of links:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/showpost.aspx?postid=276741&siteid=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=98242&SiteID=1

› Continue reading

Tags: TFS