Inside Visual Studio 2005 Team System 156
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted a top 10 list of things you need to know about Visual Studio 2005 Team System. From the article: Everybody talks about collaborative development tools, and heaven knows you can't surf the major developers' for 10 minutes without getting hit by banners trumpeting the latest. We can't fault Microsoft for wanting a piece of that action; but we need more than just a collaborative environment."
unification theories disproved (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the problem is that no unification theory holds. I software development, from a team perspective, from design to implementation to testing... regardless of what model you follow... the development team is most effective when they are not constrained by a tool.
In my current work environment, the company tried to standardize on one web server, one IDE, one OR mapper... it failed miserably. The reality is we have 4 web servers, a multitude of IDEs, and tons of different technologies that are fitting specific needs. Even on the Microsoft platform.
I do not doubt that the team tools are cool for collaboration. But they are going to be pushed into organizations that already have team tools, or ways of doing stuff.
Right tools for the right job? Most Rose managed projects I know fail. Who uses all the lifecycle stuff in JBuilder 2005? Is anyone tired of development environments that take gigs?
JBuilder (Score:4, Interesting)
A Java mindset? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's probably actually a good thing that MS is including it. That being said, "it's about time" went throught my mind more than once while reading the article.
-Pete
Re:Scary Reading! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, I understand. My friend, I was once like you. Then I discovered that it's not talking to others that matters. It's what you say that counts! Fortunately, the web is a wonderful thing, and people like these [bullshitbingo.net] have kindly provided resources to help you navigate this troublesome area more successfully. Good luck to you.
I've been trying to test TFS' SCM capabilities (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't migrate my company's Visual SourceSafe repository. The built-in analyze tools to repair corruption lock up before they do anything useful. VSS corrupts by nature. Since my repository is trashed and the repair tools are broken, I have no way of importing my source tree... into the less-mature and unreleased (still beta) Team Server.
Keep in mind, TFS's source code management is supposed to be better than VSS... not a replacement for Subversion. That's a big difference to keep note of. My most recent gripe: Rollbacks are sometimes impossible for merges. There is also no help documentation on this product, aside from marketing fluff. Even the docs are in beta.
If Team Foundation Server 1.0 is anything like Visual SourceSafe 1.0, keep your eyes open.
Cost? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I am curious (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I believe that the source control in VSTS is actually based off of the internal source control system that's been in use in Microsoft in a while - similar with the bug/work item tracking portion of VSTS. These two tools already have had significant work and lifetime, just as internal tools so far. So having them as V1 is a little misleading.
The work item tracking system is the best I've used to date. Source control isn't Clearcase, but it's definitely not bad like SourceSafe, and being able to link changesets to bugs and builds and the like is very nice.
(Disclaimer: I am a MS employee and tester on the VSTS team. But I am not now speaking on behalf of MS, and in fact, never do speak on behalf of MS.)
Re:Oh, I get it (Score:3, Interesting)
How long did it take
A better question, from a pragmatic, real-world perspective, would be "What did supporting CSS get them?". For the vast majority of readers, it isn't different from the classic table model at all (in fact it's a bit quirkier). I like CSS layout, but using Slashdot and CSS as an example is inane - they didn't support CSS because there was no practical reason to, other than a lot of Standards Astronauts beating on their door about their lack of CSS goodness.
Re:Team System is overkill bloat (Score:2, Interesting)
And that is untrue of Visual SourceSafe, Rational ClearCase, CVS, or any other source control system how, exactly? If it stores in a DBMS of any sort (be it directories/files, a single monolithic file, or any other storage medium not composed of Magic Pixie Dust(tm) it can become corrupt. Heck, you could simply go old-school and tar up your project each day and run into corruption, causing you to have to roll back to a days-or-weeks-old backup.
So let's take your statement and s/Subersion/SourceSafe:Source Safe is great, until it corrupts your repository so, that it cannot be recovered with the tools provided. Then you're glad you made daily backups of the repository, revert and continue as usual.
I mean, Source Safe IS great, and I am thinking of trying it under WINE and if it works roll it out, but it is not immune to corruption. If anything it is more prone to corruption given the higher risk of viruses/worms/etc. under Windows, not to mention NTFS flakiness. I haven't tried Subversion yet but do plan to but for a front end, unless you go all CLI, the GUI has a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft's VSS. Even Rational ClearCase couldn't match VSS for ease of use (at least not back when I used and administered it around 1999/2000), and ClearCase costs several^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmany magnitudes more than VSS.