Performing a baseless Merge in Team Foundation Server

If you search Google for how to perform a baseless Merge operation, you may come across these articles which require using the command-line:


How To: Perform a Baseless Merge in Visual Studio Team Foundation Serverhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Bb668976.aspx


Merge Commandhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bd6dxhfy%28v=vs.100%29.aspx

Well, unfortunately, Microsoft has not updated these articles for TFS 2012 and later releases!!

Fortunately, however, this article addresses how to perform a baseless Merge using the User Interface beginning with TFS 2012 and later releases: http://incyclesoftware.com/2012/08/baseless-merge-vs-2012-ui/

It is a great relief to know that you can now perform baseless merges directly using the Visual Studio User Interface and not have to resort to the command line to perform these operations thus making baseless merges much easier to use for the entire development team!

Resuming a failed VSS Upgrade

I was performing a VSS Upgrade to TFS recently and after many hours of running, the VSS Upgrade seemed to freeze and not continue processing.  As you can probably guess, canceling the operation had no effect, thus requiring me to kill the actual VSS process.

I wasn't sure about the state of the migration at that point, but I decided to re-launch the VSS Upgrade wizard just to see what options were available.

Below is the dialog that I saw:

Upon re-launching the VSS Upgrade Wizard, I was presented with the option to resume a previous upgrade!  Therefore, all of the hours spent on performing the analysis and migration could potentially be saved!

Of course, you will have to determine whether or not this option is viable for you.  If you are migrating a recent VSS 2005 database that returned with a clean analysis, a resume may work out just fine.  However, if you are working with an older VSS 6.0 database that might be on its last legs due to the numerous errors in the database, it is probably safer to simply start the upgrade all over again.

Migrating VSS to TFS

I was recently working on a project where they still were using VSS (Visual SourceSafe) and had not yet migrated to TFS (Team Foundation Server).

Several years ago, I had done a large VSS to TFS migration and it was an extremely tedious and painful process requiring the use of a command-line utility as well as an XML mapping file.

Well, fortunately, a few years ago, Microsoft released a GUI VSS Upgrade Wizard that eliminates the need for all of that manual effort:  http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/867f310a-db30-4228-bbad-7b9af0089282

The tool actually states that it only supports TFS 2010 and TFS 2012, but it worked just fine for migrating to TFS 2013 as well.

The overall guidelines to upgrade from VSS to TFS can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253060.aspx

In order to prepare to upgrade from VSS, you can read the guidelines here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253127.aspx

The preparation to upgrade basically involves:

1. Knowing the Admin password to the VSS database
2. Having Administrative access to TFS
3. Installing VSS 2005 on a computer that also has access to TFS
4. Running Analyze on the VSS database (and fixing/repairing the VSS database if necessary)

In addition, here are some other considerations when working with your VSS database that are not always well known:

1. Each VSS database should preferably be 4 GB or smaller.  If you have a VSS database that is larger than this, you may encounter very lengthy analysis times in preparation for your upgrade.
2. If you need to trim down/shrink the size of your VSS database, you can do this by archiving.  However, archives can only be 2 GB or smaller.  Therefore, this may require picking and choosing your folders that you need to archive in order to achieve this limit.  VSS, unfortunately, does not offer any assistance with chunking out archives to that they fit into the 2 GB limit.
3. If you have forgotten your Admin password, you may be able to reset the Admin password using this utility: http://not42.com/wp-content/ResetVSSPassword.zip.  (Instructions for using this tool can be found here: http://victormaceda.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/reset-vss-admin-password-to-blank/)   If this does not work for you, you may be able to reset the Admin password as long as you have another Administrative account in VSS.  Otherwise, you may be out of luck since the TFS VSS Upgrade Wizard requires the Admin password in order to perform the migration. 

Once you are ready to upgrade, you can follow the steps to upgrade your VSS database to TFS: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj612883.aspx

 If all goes well, you have successfully migrated VSS to TFS!!

Upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2012 to Team Foundation Server 2013

Unlike the upgrade from Team Foundation Server 2010, the upgrade from Team Foundation Server 2012 can be done directly without uninstalling Team Foundation Server 2012.

However, due to system requirements for Team Foundation Server 2013, you will still need to upgrade your SQL Server instance from SQL Server 2008 R2 to SQL Server 2012 SP1 (if it is not already running SQL Server 2012 SP1). 

Once you have upgraded your SQL Server instance, you can proceed with the standard TFS Upgrade process:

 

 

Team Foundation Server in the Cloud error message

I was trying to check my source code into Team Foundation Server which is hosted in the cloud and I received the following error message:

As it turns out, believe it or not, there are worldwide outages in  the Windows Azure cloud due to an expired SSL certificate!!  There is currently no estimated timeline as to when all of the servers (including the TFS Server will be back online).

You can read more about the Windows Azure Cloud Storage outage here:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/service-dashboard/

Integrating Team Foundation Server source control with SQL Server Management Studio

If you want to make Team Foundation Server source control available as a plug-in to SQL Server Management Studio (in my case SQL Server Management Studio 2012 SP1), you will have to install the Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider.

In my case, I made the initial mistake of assuming that I needed the 64-bit provider because I had installed the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2012.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken and determined that like Visual Studio 2012, SQL Server Management Studio remains a 32-bit application, therefore, I had to install the 32-bit version of the TFS MSSCCI Provider.

Both download links are available below:


Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 MSSCCI Provider 32-bithttp://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3a96a4dc-ba9c-4589-92c5-640e07332afd


Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 MSSCCI Provider 64-bit
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/3c7b6813-2617-4d5f-9a1d-5ad980cab5d2

Team Foundation Server Express in the Cloud

If you would like to sign up for a free Team Foundation Server Express account that hosts up to 5 users completely for free hosted in the Microsoft cloud, you can sign up here:

https://tfs.app.visualstudio.com/_account/Signup

You can sign up with your Windows Live ID and create a custom Url for your TFS Express account.  The account includes source control as well as bug tracking and integrates immediately with Visual Studio 2012 when connecting to Team Foundation Server. 

Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2012

If you are considering upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2012, you will have to upgrade your SQL Server version as depicted in this screenshot:

Once you have upgraded your SQL Server version, you should be able to pass the readiness check:

Once you pass the readiness checks, make sure you have backups of your Team Foundation Server 2010 databases prior to running the upgrade otherwise you may have to start all over with the upgrade process if it fails part of the way through!

Visual Studio 2012 RTM now available on MSDN!

Visual Studio 2012 RTM is now available for download from MSDN:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions

In addition, Microsoft has released the other following products:

1. Team Foundation Server 2012
2. Windows 8
3. Microsoft.Net Framework v. 4.5
4. ASP.Net MVC 4 for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Look forward to seeing the downloads for Windows Server 2012 on MSDN soon as well...

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Cumulative Update required for TFS 2012

I was installing TFS 2012 RC on one of my servers that already had SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 installed and I was quite surprised to discover that I could not install TFS 2012 on my system!

I was presented with this dialog:

So, I had to now dig up the Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 and download the most recent update (even though only Cumulative Update 1 is required).  So I found this article listing all of the CUs for SQL Server 2008 R2:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2012/04/16/cumulative-update-6-for-sql-server-2008-r2-service-pack-1.aspx

Well, after installing Cumulative Update 6, I was able to pass the Readiness Check:

Visual SourceSafe Upgrade Wizard introduced for TFS 2012

For those of you have had to migrate from Visual SourceSafe to earlier releases of Team Foundation Server, you probably know how painful it was to migrate using VSSConverter and manually modifying XML Files to get everything properly working:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181247(v=vs.90).aspx

However, that is all changing with the release of Team Foundation Server 2012 with the introduction of a Visual SourceSafe Upgrade Wizard built right into the Team Foundation Server 2012 Administration Console:

For some reason, the link is broken to actually download this tool in the Release Candidate version, but you can see what the tool supposedly looks like from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jchiou/archive/2012/07/25/2012-visual-sourcesafe-upgrade-wizard.aspx

You can download the VSS Upgrade wizard from here: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/867f310a-db30-4228-bbad-7b9af0089282

NOTE: This tool supports migrating to either TFS 2012 or TFS 2013 even though Visual Studio Gallery only officially mentions TFS 2012 support.

With the end of life for Visual SourceSafe rapidly approaching, Microsoft is attempting to migrate all of their current Visual SourceSafe users and developers onto Team Foundation Server 2012 in a relatively painless migration process.

It should be exciting to see user experiences with migrating from VSS to TFS 2012 using this new GUI Visual SourceSafe Upgrade Wizard!

Here are guidelines and instructions on using the Visual SourceSafe Upgrade Wizard: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/jj612883.aspx

Team Foundation Server is going Free!

Team Foundation Server Express will be released as a free version of Team Foundation Server with many of the same features that are offered in the full release version of Team Foundation Server. 

I imagine that Microsoft is doing this as part of their strategy to get rid of their existing Visual SourceSafe user base.  Microsoft has already announced that they will not be supporting Visual SourceSafe in the near future and there will be no future development progress on this platform, so now is as good a time as any to begin adopting the Team Foundation Server Platform.

You can read some more details about Team Foundation Server Express edition here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/02/23/coming-soon-tfs-express.aspx

You can download Team Foundation Server Express edition from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/express