I’m a bit late to this party because we released them about a week ago. I generally try to sync my blog posts but we had a death in the family last week and I just didn’t have the time to deal with blogging.
The Visual Studio preview is named “CTP 1” and you can read more about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/10/08/visual-studio-2015-update-1-ctp.aspx
The Team Foundation Server preview is named “RC 1”. The reason for the difference is that we’ve learned over the years with TFS that unless we provide a “go-live” promise (support, upgrade to the next release, etc) that no one will install a TFS preview. When you are talking about a team product that holds a lot of data it’s just not that interesting to be able to install it and “kick the tires”. You want to install it with your own data and really use it. Hence, we deliver a “go-live” RC of Update 1 for you to use for real.
- Download TFS 2015 Update 1 RC (and here’s the ISO if you need it)
- TFS 2015 Update 1 RC Release Notes
- TFS 2015 Update 1 RC KB Article
As usual in TFS/VSO land, we operation on what we call a “cloud first” development process. Work is done in real time on the live cloud service and then about once a quarter we roll all of the finished work into a TFS on-prem Update. Sometimes the updates are big. Sometimes they are small. This one is quite big (in terms of new capabilities). You can read all the details on the release notes but here’s a few things I want to call out.
Adding Git repos to a TFVC project – This has been a top customer request and a highly ranked UserVoice item. I’ve seen a lot of teams that use TFVC and want to start using Git for some or all of their work and don’t want to have to deal with moving to a new project – they just want to start adding Git repos to their current project. Now you can. There are some limitations with older IDEs but VS 2015 Update 1 enables you to access both TFVC and Git repos in the same project.
Agile improvements – We continue to make rapid progress on our Agile project management improvements and Update 1 brings a lot of the ones you’ve seen on the service already (like kanban column queries, tasks as checklists, etc) and some you haven’t seen on the service yet (like new dashboard support).
XAML build parity progress – When we released Build.vnext in TFS 2015 there were a few features from XAML builds that didn’t make it. We’re working to get full parity and in Update 1, we are delivering support for workspace mapping and branch labeling among other improvements. That leaves gated checkin as the remaining significant gap and we expect to have that finished by Update 2.
Sonar support – We continue to make our Sonar support easier to configure and use.
As I say, there’s lots more. Check out the release notes for lots of details. As for looking forward, expect an RC2, followed by a final release. We encourage you to pick up RC1 or RC2 and give any feedback to have to help make it great.
Looking forward to your feedback…
Brian
Any updates / ETA / new info on when Visual Studio Online (VSO) Extensions functionality will be made available to local TFS installs?
Sorry for your loss. 🙁
Thanks for the update Brian and So sorry for your loss ;-(
Sorry to hear of your loss, Brian. Thanks for the update as always.
Hi Brian,
Any update on RM? Beside those listed features above, we're so waiting for RM vNext. I'm assuming it's still be included in the final release of Update 1 or it will be push further?
TFS 2015 build retention policy not working…
It is deleting entry from the build summary table but not from the drop location…Please help…
Hi Brian.
We need to migrate an instance of TFS 2013 with 4 servers and several agents and controllers.
I would like to know approximately when going to publish Update 1 RTM.
To find out if it's worth waiting or install the current version of TFS 2015
Thanks
Sorry for your loss.
I've just installed rc1 and see some issues with background sync job not working and upgrading buildcontrollers does not work. I'm working with a MS guy on these issues.
@Kim Carlsen
you need to reconfigure the build agent running ConfigureAgent.cmd than the agent will update itself.
see the posting blogs.msdn.com/…/team-foundation-server-2015-update-1-rc-1.aspx
it's a bug in RC1 which will be fixed in RC2
@Chris, Still a little while. We haven't even enabled it on VSO yet. Expect some VSO announcements by the end of the year and on prem some where in the 1st half of next year.
@Gary, RM V.next isn't going to make Update 1. We'll launch it in VSO by the end of the year and it will show up on prem in Update 2. We'll try to get a CTP/RC of Update 2 out as early as we can so people can get their hands on it.
@Aslam, Thanks for the report. I'll have someone look into it.
@Norticaranda, I'm not sure of all of your constraints, but, generally installing updates is easy and quick enough that I wouldn't expect that to be a major consideration. The same can't be said for major versions – those installs tend to be longer and involve more planning/testing, etc. As for the release date for Update 1, we haven't announced a date yet but I'd expect it in 1 to 2 months.
Brian
@Aslam – We do delete all TFS resources. So, server drops, build logs, optionally test results etc… do get deleted. What we don’t do right now is delete UNC drops – the old way was fragile, hard coded and doesn’t fit the new model. We didn’t create a new build system only to re-implement the old one but it is a known gap
We have work on our backlog to implement a more general solution for cleaning up external resources as part of build retention.
Hello
How long it will take to get the RTM version 2015 Update 1? Aprox.
We have a TFS 2013 with 4 servers and several controllers and agents who want to migrate to TFS2015, and want to know if it's worth waiting for the Update 1 2015 RTM or go at current 2015 version
Cheers
Sorry for the last Post
I didn't see the previous answer
Chrispat:
what is now recommended way to delete drop(unc path)?
Is there some "event" that some build will be deleted, or something?
@Brian
I've noticed the SQL ServerExpress 2014 installer is included in the installation of TFS 2015 and Update 1 RC.
why is it copied into the Tools folder of the installed TFS even if no SQL Express installation is used and therefore wasting 311MB in the program folder and in the installation media.
Why is it not removed after configuring TFS instance to use a SQL Server Standard instance – or even better copying the SQL Server setup only if the user select SQL Express as installation option?
Brian, just wanted to share my condolences and say thanks for your blog.
Sorry for your loss, but thanks for the update.
Is there any news on Package Management in TFS? Looking forward to giving that a whirl.
@Peter, It will show up on VS Online first. Stay tuned for news in the next couple of months.
Brian
@Daniel – the real one
Thanks, but that is not the problem. Its during the installation it fails with access denied, even through i'm domain admin. Trying 3th time it works. Seen on on two different controllers. MS team is working on this so they are aware of it.
Editor performance appears to have taken a hit in Update 1 when editing line comments in .cpp files.
Create a new C++ project and type some stuff, it appears response.
Start a line comment with '// ' and type some stuff afterwards, there is a noticeable delay.
Had an warning/error in vNext build agent after upgrade.
09:33:18.228469 Microsoft.TeamFoundation.DistributedTask.WebApi.TaskAgentSessionConflictException: The task agent Sledgehammer already has an active session for owner SLEDGEHAMMER.
Had to reconfigure the agent to make it work again.
@Brian, will there be any early previews available? Currently assessing several products for our software fabric.
@Peter, We're very close to having previews of package management on VSO. We're not for TFS. I don't yet have a date but, roughly I think it will be "TFS 2016" or whatever we call the next major release. That likely means a preview sometime in the first half of next year.
Brian
Hi Brian,
Will anybody be updating the TFS MSSCCI provider to work with Visual Studio 2015? The current one says it works but it doesn't…
@Betty – it is a known issue in CTP1 that the agent has to be reconfigured. It's fixed in CTP2 and I believe it's in the readme. The tell tale sign is a session conflict as you pointed out.
The final QU1 release will have an issue where the agent needs to be restarted (we fixed a bug in handling 503 server unavailable which is what happens when it's down getting upgraded). So, on the next upgrade, just restart your agent service.
Let us know if you have any issues. Thanks!
@Aslam
Build retention policies do delete all TFS resources (not just build summaries). So, server drops, build logs, optionally test results etc… do get deleted. What we don’t do right now is delete UNC drops – the old way was fragile, hard coded and doesn’t fit the new model. In build.vnext we want to do it right so right now it's a known gap.
Some Details:
– In the new model, we have extensible tasks that create many resources – publish to different package stores (xplat as well), azure blob, whatever… Customers have asked for ways to customize retention. The old hard code list of check boxes is too limiting in the new extensible build model.
– We have an extensible task model – no reason we can’t have a retention job (just like the build process steps). The templates would do good defaults. The process can select a queue for agents. Based on the artifacts products and/or task used on the build side,we could default the retention job to the right steps and inputs.
– Security is a problem. It was always fragile whether the agent picked from the pool had permissions to delete shares. It also dictated that the account your build ran as is the same account that. The solution above solves this by allowing the customizable retention jobs to target a specific queue/pool.
– No visibility on the retention process – if it fails it’s a black with no feedback. You have to go to the controller in the old system. We want a view similar to the build queue with live console, logs etc… Rerun…
– The controller in the old system did the clean up – for high availability in build.vnext our controller moved to the job agent – that can’t do it so agents have to do it. Back to the visibility point.
Installed easy and 150GB collection upgraded in 6 minutes 🙂
What permissions are required to modify the web access dashboards?
Thanks
Andy
Sorry to hear of your loss.
We are having some issues with TSF 2015 and email alerts (sending of alerts seems to be delayed by several days).
I see some connect issues related to alert handling and some state Update 1 and some say a future update should solve it.
However the RC1 KB article and Release Notes do not mention any fixes related to alerts as far as I can tell.
Is there a way to check if the email alert issues we are seeing are related/already fixed in Update1?
Thanks in advance
@Andrew Fisher, Glad to hear the upgrade went well. For dashboards, the first thing to know is that dashboards are team specific – each team has its own dashboards. Anyone listed as a "Team Administrator" on the team page in the admin UI has permissions to modify the dashboards. You can also select a project without a team context. The team administrators for the "default team" have permissions to modify those dashboards.
Brian
Can anyone on the VS team say if this user voice request is on the radar?
visualstudio.uservoice.com/…/5279254-allow-git-ci-builds-to-monitor-changes-only-in-a-s
This request is to have the option to only trigger a CI build on commits within a subfolder of a branch. This was logged against XAML builds but is still an issue with vNext builds.
@James in Denver While we are aware of the request it is not currently on the backlog. We have several other efforts like gated and chaining that are up next.
@Chrispat, thanks for the update. I hope that's a straightforward change that can make it in soon. In the meantime, we'll continue having devs manually trigger their own builds.
did something happen with the warehouse? our old work item reports don't seem to be correct anymore (we apparently only have 1 bug and it's resolved, while this would be awesome it's certainly not the case)
@Betty, I'm the PM for reporting and analytics. Could you please send me an e-mail with the details and I'll work to track this down with my team? My e-mail address is jeff dot Levinson at Microsoft dot com.
Thanks Betty!
@Jeroen Janssen, I needed to check on some things. I can't say for sure whether or not we fixed your particular issue but, yes, in the past few months we have made substantial improvements in processing VSO/TFS notifications. We've introduced batching to eliminate redundant evaluations, short circuiting to eliminate subsequent processing when a condition fails, fixed regular expressions that had very poor performance characteristics, etc. I'd encourage you to try a build of Update 1 at some point. If it doesn't address your issue, we'd be happy to investigate and see if we've missed something.
As for not being in the release notes, I think those changes just fell below the radar and didn't get picked up for the release notes.
Brian
Hi! Can you tell what is the agent version for this RC?
@Andrij Abyzov it is 1.89 you can see the version if you look at the capabilities on the agent in the pool
We've seen some issues with MVC 4 incompatibility in VS15. Will this be resolved in Update 1?
Is there an expected release date for TFS 2015 Update 1? We will want to plan our upgrade but wanted to understand the expected release date as part of the planning process.
Thanks.
Hi Brian,
Was the ability to change the syncnamechanges property restored in this update as mentioned here: support.microsoft.com/…/3077455
I didn't see it mentioned in release notes pages:
http://www.visualstudio.com/…/tfs2015-update1-vs
msdn.microsoft.com/…/1329639b-db95-4ba7-92c5-dad4b90009b7.aspx
Hi Brian, do you know if this RC is feature complete? In other words, will additional patches slated for Update2 be added into this for RTM? Gated check-ins are required for many of our internal businesses, and we're trying to schedule when to upgrade them to TFS2015 … Thanks!
@Rob, I don't think the RC is quite feature complete but it's very close. I don't expect anything major to show up between RC and RTM. Gated checkin will show up in Update 2. I was really hoping it would make Update 1 but it just didn't.
Brian
@Greg, Mid-Nov.
Brian
@Vicken, the ability to change syncnamechanges you referenced was included in Update 1.
Derrick
I'm having issues with the new dashboards on my TFS Instance. Whenever i create a new instance and attempt to navigate to it – i get a 404 Page Not Found error page. Any ideas what might be the issue here?
@Richard – hello, I'm the Engineering Lead for the Dashboards feature. Please email me with further details on your issue, including the root URL for your TFS instance and an example URL which is returning 404, so that my team can work to investigate + resolve any underlying issue. My email address is chris dot snyder at microsoft dot com. Thanks!
I got excited that there's a new version available and installed this over my TFS Express 2015 install, thinking it would become Express 2015 U1RC1. I see now that this installer is for the full version of TFS with the option for a 90 day trial (no option of Express). When Update 1 is released will I be able to upgrade to Express again, or will I be "locked in to" the full version of TFS? Should I uninstall the release candidate and go back to 2015 Express now before updating databases (backed up of course, but don't want to lose next few weeks of work if I can't move to Express later)? Thanks for all the great features that I can look forward to!
Can I also add a TFVC repo to a Git project?
Not in the RC but you will be able to in the final Update 1 release.
Brian
Hi all,
We updated our TFS2013 Update4 to the TFS2015 Update 1 RC1 Version. The Upgrade went fine, however we have issues with the Datawarehouse Job.
With the "Work Item Tracking Warehouse Sync" we get the TF221122 Error: Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.FactWorkItemChangeset' with unique index 'FactWorkItemChangeset_WorkItemChangesetBK'. This Changeset refers to sourcefiles which have been destroyed in the past.
We tried several Options, which didn't solve the Problem.
Is this some known issue? Is it solved with the RC2?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Michel
@Michel yes it's a known issue, I was talking to Jeff Levinson about it although I haven't heard back from who he referred me to for a while.
@Betty
Thanks for the Feedback. I can confirm that the issue with the Warehouse has been solved with RC2.
Yesterday we installed the TFS2015 Update 1 RC2 Version and the Warehouse is running fine now.
Cheers
Michel
@MSSCCI driver
There aren't plans to support MSSCCI with VS2015 at this time, but VS2013 works. I'll update the MSSCCI page since it has incorrect info.