Sometimes I receive some strange error messages from TFS. This error occurs once in a while, I wonder why TFS requires Messenger to be runnning? I'll connect to TFS anyway, after clicking OK.

Working at Microsoft we had a checkin policy, that you can't checkin without associating the changeset with a work item. Never really occured to me, why we had to do this, but it seemed like a good practice.

 On the last two projects I worked on, that involved Team Foundation Server as version control, the customer has been using other software for bug tracking. Because of that, we haven't used workitems, and it seems like there's no point in associating changesets to workitems.

That was a wrong assumption. After I completed the first task on the project I'm currently working on I discovered, that it is a requirement that we create a document, describing every change that's been done to the code. The document is meant for code review, so it's a fairly good idea. But - when I had to track down every change done in the repository for 14 days of work, and 20 other developers made checkins, it showed to be a bit of a task to track down my changes (and boring as well).

On the next task, we decided to create a workitem. Not that it'll be used by anybody else. But we decided to create it, and agreed to associate every checkin with the workitem, so that it'll be a piece of cake to list the changesets regarding this task.

Now this seems like a pretty good solution to me. This way we can always track down every change done, regarding this task. But is it without problems? I don't think so. First of all, it requires some discipline from the developers to do the association. I've seen too many developers who doesn't even bother to write a comment, when they checkin. Another problem on the current project is, that there hasn't been awareness of the details in the code review document, until everybody completed a task which typically lasted 2-4 weeks. So what can you do, when it's too late ?

The best solution I found so far, to track down your own changes is to install the "Team Foundation Server Power Tools" which can be found here: TFS powertools .

You'll get lots of small extra stuff in you're team explorer. One thing is, that you'll get a node in the treeview displaying your team members. On the team members node you can get a list of every changeset that's been done by a specific developer, hence help you do the code review.

Big brother? Maybe, but very helpfull.

Update 20090424: Erik Ejlskov told me about a tool for doing extended searches in the repository called "Team Foundation Sidekicks". Pretty cool 3rd party tool, can be downloaded here: Team Foundation Sidekicks

During my easter holidays, I had some sparetime for once, and I needed to reinstall my laptop. The choice was to downgrade to XP or reinstall Vista. I got really tired with Vista, now that's an operating system, that should have never been released.

But since my current customer provides me with a spare laptop, I don't accually use my own these days, so I thought why not give Windows 7 a shot even though it's in Beta.

My first findings was sweet. Win7 is still nothing compared to OsX, but Microsoft really upped them selves on this one. Compared to Vista it is soooooo snappy, and I really love what they did with the taskbar. Off course it's in beta, so there'll be some downs as well:

gr8:

• New taskbar UI is brilliant
• From computer management you can attach a virtual image (vhd) as an extra harddrive
• When docking my Lenovo, I've had big problems with display settings under Vista - these disapeared with win7
• Windows Mobile Device Center connects to my mobile device, _every_ time. This rarely happened with Vista (or XP and Active Sync)

Downers (Hopefully due to beta):

• Some times my laptop goes to sleep mode for no reason, even while using the laptop (Solved: this only occurs while AVG virus scanner is running)
• Some times it boots into repair mode, but can't repair. Shut down the laptop, go for a smoke, try again and it boots