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Finally!!

Take a look at this: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/05/08/445742.aspx

See my post in my TeamSystemRocks.com blog: http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/04/04/791.aspx

Original post: http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/03/03/715.aspx

I knew there should be a better/more elegant way to do what I described in my last post (http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/02/16/686.aspx)

Check out this post: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=273633&SiteID=1

Original post: http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/03/08/725.aspx

As more of our clients adopt Team System, it has been quite common lately for me to talk about Team Foundation Version Control workspaces. I often find myself having the exact same conversation with different people as they are trying to get from or add files to the version control repository [ NOTE: These are people that did not take our training ;-) ].

It all starts with something along the lines of "but the item is greyed out in Source Control Explorer"... If this is happening to you, you need to create a workspace mapping.

A workspace, according to the VSTS help "Represents a client-side copy of the files in the repository that you want to work in." What that means is that the TFS server needs to know where to put the files on your local drive when you perform a Get operation; and you have to specify it, there are no defaults and the server will not guess the location. Notice that I said 'server', this information is tracked on the server.

Now, you may have been working with VSTS and Source Control and not had any issues with workspaces. When you create a new solutions and select the 'Add to source control' checkbox, this creates a workspace mapping for you; I personally do not like this mapping because it is very specific to that solution, it goes to the solution folder level. This could potentially add a lot of mapping entries to your workspace definition, making it confusing and hard to manage. I personally like to have mappings at the Team Project root level. Mappings are recursive so once you define a top level mapping, your entire local folder structure could be created automatically and it will be exactly the same as your SCC folder structure.

Depending on your folder structures, you may have to end up with many mapping entries anyway. But for new projects I like to have my Team Project root (i.e. $/MyTeamProject) mapped to a folder of the same same name in my local drive, and this folder would be under C:\TeamProjects. I create these project mappings before I start working on any Team Project.

To create a workspace mapping select File -> Source Control -> Workspaces, select the workspace you want to modify (ideally you will only have one to choose from) then click Edit and add your entry in the grid at the bottom of the Dialog Box.

Workspaces are per machine, per user account. In other words, a user account can have a different workspace definition for each computer he or she uses, and there can be multiple workspaces in a given computer (if multiple user accounts are used to log in to the computer). Workspaces cannot be shared, which means that if to users of $/MyTeamProject log in to the same computer, they cannot both have that folder mapped to C:\TeamProjects\MyTeamProject, an alternative to this would be to create the 'TeamProjects' local folder under the 'My Documents' folder of each user account, but this could potentially cause your solution and VS project files to have very long location paths.

Check out my post on TeamSystemRocks.com:

http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/02/16/686.aspx

Check my post on TeamSystemRocks.com: http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2006/02/08/665.aspx

Microsoft Korea has a rap song for Team System:

http://www.microsoft.com/korea/events/ready2005/vs_song.asp

This is what it says:

[Intro]
The customer :
"This won't work. Find me another."
The owner :
"Don’t have time? Then stay up all night tonight.
You couldn't finish this thing by now! Then, what are we supposed to do?"
The boss :
"This is too mediocre, we need something different here, something more interesting and more hip."
"Oh, just Stop, I don't want to hear it any more!"

[1st part]
customers who just keep demanding,
my neck that gets as stiff as a piece of wood,
the owner who keeps telling us to work until morning with no sleep,
and, gosh, just leaves the office as soon as he finishes his talk,
a junior colleague who says, "i found a better place to work."
all in all, my work gets doubled,
my boss who blames me for not understanding what he says,
my heart, which gets crushed one more time,

we developers who keep living a hard life all the time,
coworkers ask me, "do you see any future by working your ass off everyday?"
i wonder if i will ever be the one who finishes laughing.
my only wish, my only wish is,
By now, I need to have a life
as perfect as the software I created.

I will arm myself, because that is the only way to put an end to this boring life.
I will invest in myself, because that is the only way
that I can refresh myself and be ahead of others.

[2nd part]
I have lots of stuff I put off, even though I wanted to complete.
However, the damn "coding" stopped me from doing it.
The hunger that I tormented me while working nights.
The desperation that I got after knowing I lost all the coding work that I put in.
Now, things have changed.
Take the opportunity for taking my idea to fly high.
The VS 2005 is finally reborn,
as the beacon for software developers dreaming freedom.
You do not call me a coder any more for god's sake,
because we keep striving to be part of a larger world.
Since I have a brand-new design right here in my hand,
I can now embrace the whole future, using my whole body,
for you and me
for you and me.
We are proud of being developers leading this world.
And We will take the flowers of hope to fruition, even bigger than ever before.

[Bridge x 4]
Visual / Studio / Team / System

[Chorus]
I will arm myself, because that is the only way to put an end to this boring life.
I will invest in myself, because that is the only way
that I can refresh myself and be ahead of others.

[Outro]
"Are you done for the day? Then, how about have some beer?"
"This looks fantastic! Why don't we stick with this?
"Which program do you use, sir?"

Here is another problem you may run into when running web tests in Visual Studio 2005:

 http://teamsystemrocks.com/blogs/omarv/archive/2005/10/20/439.aspx

With the upcoming release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft will be making some exciting new changes to Visual Studio and MSDN Subscriptions products and corresponding pricing and licensing.

Join Jerry Flynn, Microsoft Developer Solution Specialist, as he hosts a Microsoft webcast presentation on the Visual Studio Team System and the transition plan to the new products on Thursday, October 20, 2005 9:00 AM (CST)