We are happy to announce release of the version 1.2.0 of Harvest Administration Assistant, with support for CA Harvest Software Change Manager r7.x and r12.x.

The latest version was created by pureSCM, creators of the Unify Application Lifecycle Management add-on for Harvest. Here is a summary of the changes :

• Fixed r12 compatibility problem caused by change from CHAR datatypes to VARCHAR in Oracle database
• Fixed display bug for process specific properties view (the grid label always showed “Create Package Properties” regardless of process type selected)
• Added support for new r12 processes – Delete Package, Move Item, Move Path, Remove Path, Rename Path
• Added automatic adjustment of approver groups to match execute permission groups when modifying access control for Approve processes

With questions and feedback, please reach out to us on the blog or at info_at_attrice_dot_info.

Team Foundation Sidekicks for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 is available!

This release functionality is identical to the previous version of Sidekicks for Visual Studio 2013, with support of TFS both on premise and in-the-cloud (Team Foundation Service).

Team Foundation Sidekicks for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 is available!

This release functionality is mainly identical to the version of Sidekicks for Visual Studio 2010, with support of TFS both on premise and in-the-cloud (Team Foundation Service).

For 2012 we support both stand-alone client application and Visual Studio integration package; the latter uses VS 2012 extension registration mechanism and is available through VS Extensions Manager. Note that there are separate installations for stand-alone app and VS package.

As always, we would be happy to hear your feedback, so please feel free to comment on the blog or reach us at tfs_at_attrice_dot_info.

MSBuild Sidekick v3 Beta is updated to work with .NET 4.0 RC. Get it here!

We have updated the Sidekicks to work with RC build of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2010, the updated version can be downloaded here. The updated version have the same feature-set as described in the previous post.

For RTM, the plan is to update Sidekicks to expose additional functionality new to 2010; if you have any additional wishes now is the time for the feedback – drop us an email at tfs_at_attrice_dot_info.

MSBuild is powerful general purpose build engine, but what if you have a dedicated build server running Team Foundation Server Build? Did you know that you can execute Team Build projects locally and even debug them with MSBuild Sidekick? In this post we shall show how to do that in three simple steps (for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008).

Prior to debugging you need to know about several limitations desktop build has comparing to Team build running on the server. From MSDN article "How to: Build Team Projects on a Desktop":

• The desktop builds perform only the compilation and tests.
• They do not perform other public build steps such as getting sources from version control, updating work items, labeling sources, creating new work items, and copying to drop locations
• The default MSBuild logger logs the results because the Team Foundation Build logger is not enabled for desktop builds.
• The desktop builds do not store build data in the database.
• They do not generate any status reports. Build output is written to console. You can learn more details by enabling the Verbosity option when running the MSBuild command. For more information, see MSBuild Command Line Reference.

1. Follow the directions in the article to get you all prerequisites for building Team Build projects locally in order.

2. Open local copy of Team Build project file from previous step with MSBuild Sidekick and define TeamBuildRefPath property in "Project Properties" pane. To do so access "Build" -> "Build Options" menu item, and then click "Project Properties" icon at the left pane and add TeamBuildRefPath property with its value set to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\" (or different drive where you have VS 2008 installed).

Reload project by clicking "File" -> "Reload". A few warnings you still see do not affect further debugging.

3. Your Team Build project is now ready for debugging. You may start debugging by clicking Debug toolbar button or pressing F5 key.

You can learn more about debugging and how to use it efficiently from our previous posts “How to debug step-by-step with MSBuild Sidekick” and “How to review Properties & Items while debugging with MSBuild Sidekick”.

We are happy to announce a release of MSBuild Sidekick v3, supporting full range of MSBuild versions from 2.0 to 4.0. Using v3, you will be able to experiment with new MSBuild features available in .Net 4.0 Beta 2 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

Download and try this new version right now! You don’t need to uninstall previous MSBuild Sidekick version, and no license is required for the beta (the beta expires on 01 May 2010). Runtime .Net 4.0 Beta 2 is required.

It’d be great if you email us about your user experience, found bugs and new feature requests. Final version MSBuild Sidekick v3 will be released after Visual Studio 2010 RTM.

As year 2010 rolls in, Team Foundation Sidekicks for Beta 2 release candidate of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2010 is available!

The release functionality is mainly identical to that of version 2.4 for 2005/2008, with the exception of the following:
Permissions Sidekick: Sidekick is not available in this release (to be added back in 2010 RTM timeframe)
Build Type editing (VS integration only): The feature is not available in this release
Dynamic History support (VS integration only): the History toolwindow is updated only when it is visible alongside with Source Control Explorer and single instance of the window exists (in 2010 History toolwindow may have multiple instances)

For 2010 we still supply both stand-alone client application and Visual Studio integration package; the latter uses VS 2010 extension registration mechanism and is now available through VS Extensions Manager.

Please note that since object model API for 2010 release is still being finalized, we did not include any new features in the release for beta 2, relying instead on API backward compatibility (on which TFS team did an excellent job allowing us to provide same features as in 2008 with minimum changes). But we do plan on supporting TFS 2010 new features in our utilities; if you feel strongly about any features or want to provide other feedback, feel free to comment on the blog or reach us at tfs_at_attrice_dot_info.

We are proud to announce new Team Foundation Sidekicks release. With this release we conclude support for Visual Studio/TFS 2005 & 2008; from now on any future releases will target VS/TFS 2010. Sidekicks version for 2010 (based on Beta 2 bits) may be expected by the end of 2009.

The release 2.4 includes a relatively large number of bug fixes as well as couple of new features.

Features

• Labels Sidekick: Support filtering by file extension in Labels Comparison window
• Code Review Sidekick: Check-in policy violation indication shown next to changesets in a list
• Workspace Sidekick: Support ability to save list of found workspaces
• New Users View Sidekick: Show searchable list of user names and user display names in TFS Valid Users group

Bug fixes

• BUGFIX VS Integration (Dynamic History): exception thrown when viewing history on pending adds
• BUGFIX Code Review Sidekick: Changeset/Work Item selection dialogs do not keep last set of parameters set
• BUGFIX Code Review Sidekick: When all changesets selected, the list of changesets is not scrollable
• BUGFIX Labels Sidekick: Multiple selection of labels in list does not work with keyboard
• BUGFIX Labels Sidekick: Labels Comparison is out of sync for certain label content
• BUGFIX Status Sidekick: Undoing changes on root node ($\) causes an exception

Let’s conclude with short description of new Users View Sidekick. Sidekick works around known limitation in TFS version control, where it displays only user names for item history or other version control dialogs. In some corporate environments user names tend to follow cryptic conventions set by IT which are completely unrelated to actual user first and last name (such as GERWA12N etc.). In such scenarios, Users View Sidekick would allow you searching for actual user display name using AD user name.

Caveat that applies to the usage of Users View Sidekick – retrieving user names through TFS OM API may potentially take quite a long time.