Buck Hodges

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS and Team Foundation Server)

Git Credential Manager is now installed by Git for Windows

Beginning with version 2.7.3, Git for Windows includes the Git Credential Manager (GCM) that makes authenticating with Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) a breeze with both Microsoft Accounts (MSAs fka LiveIDs) and Azure Active Directory (AAD) identities. Since GCM is installed by default, you’ll get prompted for credentials when running git...

Internal error loading the Changeset Comments checkin policy

[Update 11/26/12] You can get the fix by installing Update 1 (or newer) for Visual Studio 2012: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads. Some customers, after starting to use Visual Studio 2012 with their existing TFS deployment, have been receiving check-in policy errors having to do with the Changeset Comments policy. The errors...

How to distribute custom checkin policies and work item controls using the power tools

Custom checkin policies and custom work item controls are great ways to take advantage of the extensibility of TFS.  You can use checkin policies to enforce certain standards on checkins (even in your builds).  Custom work item controls allow you to add controls to your work item forms that present data in particular way, access...

Hidden gem in TFS 2010: How to rollback a changeset with tf rollback

[UPDATE 8/8/11]  The TFS 2010 power tools now provide rollback in the UI as described here. Tonight Justin and I spoke to the Minnesota Visual Studio User Group.  It was completely unscripted, and we had a great time answering questions and telling a few stories (can you name the original code names for version control, work item ...

How to convert a branch back to a regular folder

In an effort to remove a small amount of complexity from the UI, we have the command to convert a branch back to a folder appear only under the main menu and not in the right click menu.  The way to convert a branch back to a regular folder is to do the following. Why would you want to do this?  The reason would be ...

How to figure out whether a change has made it to another branch

[UPDATE 11/5/12] I wanted to add that when using either the hierarchy view or the track changeset view, you can use Ctrl-C when the window has focus to get an image of it copied to the clipboard rather than having to use a screenshot tool. One of the great features in TFS 2010 is the ability to track changesets across branches. A prime ...

Sorting by multiple columns in work item tracking

Recently I was showing someone the results of a bug query and sorting by more than one column in work item tracking in Team Explorer.  When the person said he didn't realize that feature existed, I decided it would be worth posting.  This also works in Team System Web Access. To sort by more the one column, simply hold the Shift key ...

Why the CheckInEvent doesn’t list all of the files in a changeset

I recently received a question from someone about the CheckInEvent. We subscribe to the Notify event using the BisSubscribe tool. Basically we have many applications that share some projects, but as TFS has no mechanism for sharing we have written our own in house app. We have hooked into Notify for the CheckInEvents and we check each ...