Installing Visual Studio 2012 with Update 2 CTP4

 

Brian Harry has announced release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP4, this release contains significant improvements compared with other 3 releases and this is the final CTP release.  This weekend I have decided to refresh my environment with this latest Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP4 release.

Before I start, let me give some details on what’s new in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP4.

• Backup and restore Power Tool
• Preserve Configuration on Upgrade
• Servicing in High Availability SQL Environments (SQL Always On)
• Customizable kanban columns
• Visual Studio Git Extension

You can complete details of new features here , you can download Visual Studio 2012 Update CTP4 from here http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=273878.

My development environment setup

(Note :this is my personal development environment setup and does not guarantee security or other features )

Steps

1.Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36833 and download “VS2012.2 CTP TFS Server ENU.iso” file

2. Mount “VS2012.2 CTP TFS Server ENU.iso” file and double click on “tfs_server.exe”

3. Accept the license terms for the Team Foundation Server by selecting check box and click on “Install Now” button

4. Wait till the time update gets over

 

5. Once installation completed you will be redirect to following Upgrade Wizard screen

6. Enter appropriate appropriate SQL instance name

7. Enter tsf service account (I am going to select default NT Authority\Local Service)

8. I don’t want to configure my reporting service now, so I am going to skip this by un checking the check box

9. I don’t have SharePoint configured on my box , following option will be disabled mode

10. Following screen shows the detailed summary which you have selected

11. Click on Next button to verify the selected setting is correct or not

12. Click on Configure button to configure the tfs

13. Once Configuration process is done, click on Next button to start upgrade process

14. Upgrade process is in progress

15. Upgrade process is completed, click on Next button

16. Upgrade process complete

17. Open Team Foundation Server Administrative Console, which shows TFS is upgraded to CTP4

18 . Application tier up gradation summary

Introduction to Team Foundation Service ( TFS build in the cloud!) Part 1

 

 

Team Foundation Service is a cloud offering of Team Foundation Server (TFS) by the Microsoft, now with the release of Team Foundation Service cloud offering, no need to worry about hosting and configuring your Team Foundation Server on your premises, it has all the capabilities which is provided by the TFS. ( Team foundation Service is free for some duration , please check Team Foundation Service link for more details)

 

This is really great for the teams which are working on multiple geo locations. Earlier setting up TFS for multiple geo location was very tedious and very time consuming. Those who are working in big companies knows the pain which they need to go through to get the approvals for opening port, setting up the environment, explanation which they need to provide if they want to have more number of server etc. etc.

 

Since this is completely cloud offering, all characteristics of cloud computing are applicable to the Team Foundation Service cloud offering such as ‘on demand’,’scalability’….

 

1. Login to https://tfs.visualstudio.com/ with your live id

2. Click on ‘Create a free account now’ hyperlink

3.Provide the Account URL information which will be used to connect to Team Foundation Service using Team Explorer using Visual Studio

4.You are done with creating your free Team Foundation Service account in the cloud and following is your Team Foundation Web Portal

5.Now lets connect to Team Foundation Service using Visual Studio. Go to Visual Studio, select Connect to Team Foundation Server from Team menu or from Team Explorer.

6. Click on ‘Servers’ button from the below window

7. Click on Add button which will open Add Team Foundation Server window, enter  the URL which you have created at step 3 and click on Ok button which will connect to Team Foundation Service on the cloud. ( for me its https://mycompany.visualstudio.com/)

8.First time user need to sign in with live id to connect with Team Foundation Service.

 

Now you are connected with Team Foundation Service.(I don’t want here to give user manual kind of details such as click on Ok button, use close button. The procedure to connect Team Foundation Service cloud offering is similar like TFS. I have skipped some of the screen shots to shorten this blog)

Introduction to Team Foundation Service ( TFS build in the cloud!) Part 1

 

 

Team Foundation Service is a cloud offering of Team Foundation Server (TFS) by the Microsoft, now with the release of Team Foundation Service cloud offering, no need to worry about hosting and configuring your Team Foundation Server on your premises, it has all the capabilities which is provided by the TFS. ( Team foundation Service is free for some duration , please check Team Foundation Service link for more details)

 

This is really great for the teams which are working on multiple geo locations. Earlier setting up TFS for multiple geo location was very tedious and very time consuming. Those who are working in big companies knows the pain which they need to go through to get the approvals for opening port, setting up the environment, explanation which they need to provide if they want to have more number of server etc. etc.

 

Since this is completely cloud offering, all characteristics of cloud computing are applicable to the Team Foundation Service cloud offering such as ‘on demand’,’scalability’….

 

1. Login to https://tfs.visualstudio.com/ with your live id

2. Click on ‘Create a free account now’ hyperlink

3.Provide the Account URL information which will be used to connect to Team Foundation Service using Team Explorer using Visual Studio

4.You are done with creating your free Team Foundation Service account in the cloud and following is your Team Foundation Web Portal

5.Now lets connect to Team Foundation Service using Visual Studio. Go to Visual Studio, select Connect to Team Foundation Server from Team menu or from Team Explorer.

6. Click on ‘Servers’ button from the below window

7. Click on Add button which will open Add Team Foundation Server window, enter  the URL which you have created at step 3 and click on Ok button which will connect to Team Foundation Service on the cloud. ( for me its https://mycompany.visualstudio.com/)

8.First time user need to sign in with live id to connect with Team Foundation Service.

 

Now you are connected with Team Foundation Service.(I don’t want here to give user manual kind of details such as click on Ok button, use close button. The procedure to connect Team Foundation Service cloud offering is similar like TFS. I have skipped some of the screen shots to shorten this blog)

Introduction to Team Foundation Service ( TFS build in the cloud!) Part 1

 

 

Team Foundation Service is a cloud offering of Team Foundation Server (TFS) by the Microsoft, now with the release of Team Foundation Service cloud offering, no need to worry about hosting and configuring your Team Foundation Server on your premises, it has all the capabilities which is provided by the TFS.

 

This is really great for the teams which are working on multiple geo locations. Earlier setting up TFS for multiple geo location was very tedious and very time consuming. Those who are working in big companies knows the pain which they need to go through to get the approvals for opening port, setting up the environment, explanation which they need to provide if they want to have more number of server etc. etc.

 

Since this is completely cloud offering, all characteristics of cloud computing are applicable to the Team Foundation Service cloud offering such as ‘on demand’,’scalability’….

 

1. Login to https://tfs.visualstudio.com/ with your live id

2. Click on ‘Create a free account now’ hyperlink

3.Provide the Account URL information which will be used to connect to Team Foundation Service using Team Explorer using Visual Studio

4.You are done with creating your free Team Foundation Service account in the cloud and following is your Team Foundation Web Portal

5.Now lets connect to Team Foundation Service using Visual Studio. Go to Visual Studio, select Connect to Team Foundation Server from Team menu or from Team Explorer.

6. Click on ‘Servers’ button from the below window

7. Click on Add button which will open Add Team Foundation Server window, enter  the URL which you have created at step 3 and click on Ok button which will connect to Team Foundation Service on the cloud. ( for me its https://mycompany.visualstudio.com/)

8.First time user need to sign in with live id to connect with Team Foundation Service.

 

Now you are connected with Team Foundation Service.(I don’t want here to give user manual kind of details such as click on Ok button, use close button. The procedure to connect Team Foundation Service cloud offering is similar like TFS. I have skipped some of the screen shots to shorten this blog)

A Little Look At Visual Studio 2012

 

 

 

Well, this is my first blog using Geegswithblogs and I want to share some new features of Visual Studio 2012 which is a great tool and comes with lots of new improvements on IDE. So lets me share some of the new features without spending more time.

 

Look And Feel

Look and feel has improved drastically when compared with its earlier version of Visual Studio 2010. You will feel some kind of freshness with this new IDE look and feel. Microsoft has even decided to change old emblem with new one to infuse new freshness into the IDE. Even icons such as “Save” , “Open File” , “New Project” etc. has been changed.

 

 

Application Round Tripping

Earlier when you open project in new version of Visual Studio , it used to convert project to the newer version with wizard option, and going back to older version was very challenging. Now with the release of Visual Studio 2012 , you can open Visual Studio 2010 project with Visual Studio 2012 and it wont covert it to  and whenever you want , you can switch back or open project with Visual Studio 2010 without any issues. This is called round tripping.  With this , one team can work on Visual Studio 2010 as well as on Visual Studio 2012.  One thing need to be noted here, only project from Visual Studio 2010 SP1 can be round tripped and projects targeting .Net 2.0 to 4.0  and Silverlight  4 to 5 can be round tripped.

Open Visual Studio 2010 project using Visual Studio 2012 and notice the Target Framework , which will be set to .Net Framework 4.0. This is possible because of Application Round Tripping functionality.

 

Application Code Clones

When application grows, developers tends to copy existing codes from one module to another modules, which sometimes leads to bugs in the application, now with the help of Visual Studio Code Clone, you can find out the list of code clones.

Look at following screen shot, I have created one simple original class Employees with a single method GetListOfEmployees(), then I copied same code to create class Orders and Products, then with the help of code clones(select block of code which you want to search , right click and click on “Find Matching Clones in Solution”) I tried to search the list of code cones, which found 2 matches as shown in the screen shot.

 

 

You can compare two code snippets to check the modification made to the original code

Latest Release From DevLabs called “Inline Navigate To”

 

 

From last several years DevLabs has released lots of new developer productivity tools which allows developer to enhance their development ability , allows developer to concentrate more on development  activity instead of spending more time on unwanted activities. For an example, recent release developer productivity tool from Microsoft DevLabs for Visual Studio 2012 called “Inline Navigate To”  which can be downloaded from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5437f2e7-adef-44e2-b841-78be850e763e   helps developer to quickly navigate to Classes, Enums, Methods, File name, line number etc..

As soon you install “Inline Navigate To” , it automatically gets registered with Ctrl+, and Ctrl+G. (following screen shot when I pressed Ctrl + G)

some example shown in following screen shots how you can perform different operations using “Inline Navigate To”

• Search for the word

• Search for the file name

 

This is really great extension developed by the DevLabs, but not sure how much developer community will like this extension using Visual Studio 2012 because some of the features are already present in Visual Studio 2012.

Introduction to Team Foundation Server 2012

Microsoft has recently launched Team Foundation Server 2012 with lots of new features, look and feel wise it has improved a lot and now if you look at Microsoft strategy, they are targeting more product which works touch capable machines. Look at following screen from the TFS 2012 which allows user to move work item very nicely using touch screen capabilities, just like how you move items from your touch screen mobile phone. Just imagine you are with your developer to get a daily status progress of the work item using this touch screen capabilities.


This is one simple example how efficiently you can use this TFS 2012 feature, this you can achieve using even mouse also, but in near future you will see lots of touch capable desktops and laptops, that’s the reason why Microsoft has released its new OS Windows 8 which completely utilizes touch screen capabilities.

Lots and lots of companies now a days are using Agile, all of us are well aware of Agile advantages. When it comes to earlier versions of Team Foundation Server such as 2005, 2008 or 2010, there is a very less support for the Agile.

But with the introduction of TFS2012, there is a lots of improvements, it supports almost all required features of the Agile developments.

The project home page which is configurable and provides lots of options to customize, such you can create a dashboard which shows you Backlog, Burndown chart, sprint details which includes sprint start and end date, efforts spent so far. The representation can be seen in very nice tiles.