To develop some boilerplate code for a dockerized solution, I want to have multiple docker-compose .dcproj projects in the same solution.
Lets say:
shared-docker-compose.dcproj - Shared services for interop, like a MQ
example-docker-compose.dcproj - Example services for testing/playground for the boilerplate.
app1-docker-compose.dcproj - The actual services for scenario 1
app#...
This should keep the velocity in development high if a part of solution needs an update. And the developer is free to consider which part of the whole solution he wants to take a look at.
Okay - not really a problem to create this project/compose files. No problem with docker, docker-compose, or any other part of the solution. Except the IDE.
Visual Studio 2017 truely struggles with multiple dcproj-files.
The behavior is different based on the order of dcproj in the .sln-file.
It takes the first found dcproj.
Unloading all other dcproj helps. But I'm not sure if this is stable.
Even if it starts, there's no guarantee the debugger tracking the requested composition. E.g. Starting dcproj#3, the debugger listens to dcproj#2.
If the first found dcproj is just plain image distributor (Like start MQ, no code, thus no 'build:'), then the compose gets up but the dev is dumped in silence.
Strangely, when there are multiple dcproj-files in the solution and you Add -> Docker Support you can choose which of them.
Or in a short: Not usable without a strong explanation to all developers. It even took a long time to get all those responsibility fragments together.
So, here's my question:
Is there any way for such a composition that works with Visual Studios .dcproj too?
Are there any recommendations for such a common scenario?
At the moment, the only way I've found was to split the solutions where the only difference is which docker-compose is included. Thank you for any ideas and for sharing your practices.
Btw, I'd like to add a dcproj-file tag. :)
Different developers check in the code touching the same file or different branches could be getting merged. I am new to TFS from the admin side but I do know how to do basic check-in of the code. How can I avoid the code collision from admin side? We are using Microsoft Team foundation server as version control.
Version control systems are made to allow different users to edit the same files and so that when merging, it provides a reasonable experience upon merge. The ability to check out the same file by multiple developers is one of the things that allows teams to become highly productive. When multiple versions of the same product are being developed or maintained, it's impossible to prevent conflicts altogether.
There is a lot of additional guidance available through the ALM RAngers' guides. I highly recommend you and your developers read this.
Note:
Visual Studio 2013 offers a much better merge experience than older versions. 3rd party tools like Semantic Merge further improve the experience by parsing the code being merged and applying some additional intelligent logic to prevent conflicts.
For certain notoriously hard to merge files, like SSIS packages, there are additional specialist tools such as BIDS Helper Smart Diff.
Some things you can do:
Make sure developers communicate
Teams that do a daily scrum (stand-up meeting) or have the ability to use Team Rooms in TFS can signal intent and keep others up to date on what they're doing pro-actively. Making sure that there is a dedicated communication channel available and that the users have the Team Rooms extension installed in case they're not co-located. Communication prevents many of these type of issues and is the best solution once such a merge issue occurs.
Have developers perform a get-latest and check-in frequently
While there is no server setting for this, having your developers trained on branching, merging and general source control patterns can help a lot. If a user regularly checks for incoming changes (get latest) and checks in as soon as he is relatively confident about his code (say after the first test passes when using TDD), then chances of conflicts is substantially lower.
The Incoming Changes Lens
Codelens has been updated with a new Lens as one of the updates that was released after RTM. The lens requires both the Client and the Server to be upgraded to at least Update 2 and at least Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Update 2. It's recommended that when you start applying the Updates, you always stay current, thus I'd recommend you install Update 4.
While Code Lens is an Ultimate feature, it will be moved into Professional with the release of Visual Studio 2015.
Use Exclusive Checkout
If users use the Checkout and lock option to check out a file, they can signal other users that the file is undergoing major changes. This feature requires that all users have their workspace type set to "Server Workspace". Local workspaces, given their disconnected nature, ignore the Lock flag. Though individual users can always override their workspace type, it is possible to set the default workspace type at the collection level.
Disable Merging and Multiple checkout for individual file types
A better solution is to mark file types that are hard to merge, the old style SSIS packages with lots of XML and GUIDs are agood candidate here. Open the Source Control settings and add the extensions of "bad files". This setting applies partially in Visual Studio regardless of the workspace setting (Visual Studio will only offer Take Local or Take Server and will not offer to merge.
Disable Multiple Checkout
It is possible to set the Project's Source Control option not allow "Multiple Checkouts", this will automatically acquire a Lock when a file is checked out. It's not recommended to turn this feature on, as it introduces a lot of frustrating things while working in Visual Studio (most importantly when adding any file, one has to acquire a lock on the project file). As with Exclusive Checkout, this requires all users to use Server Workspaces.
As this feature will prevent any file from being checked out by multiple people, it's often trying to apply way to much force to solve this issue. Only in case your developers mess up on a high frequency, you may enable this feature temporarily while they receive training.
We are some Devs working on an internal TFS-Repository. This TFS can only be accessed from within out network.
But we also have a test-lab which wasn't meant to, but ended up in being a development environment. Because we do not have any access to our company's TFS we used Microsofts tfs (visualstudio.com) instead.
We do not have the chance to change ANYTHING in our network-structure. So stuff like "just allow your test-machines to access your internal TFS would be of no help)
Some of our DEV-Machines can access both TFSs (internal and visualstudio.com) and some can only connect to the internal.
My idea would be to install some "sync" onto one of those dev-machines that can access both tfs's
What would be the best way to do that?
Bottom Line Up Front: There is no way to do what you are asking in a scalable and maintainable way
The only way to fix this issue is for all developers to have access to the TFS server that they are using. However if you have a large budget for support and unlimited patience you can use the TFS Integration Tools.
You can use it to sync both source and work items in a bi-directional manor. It will even maintain any relationships between source and wit.
Now the bad:
You will have to resolve all conflicts by logging onto the server running the migration.
You must have communication between the two servers
It's going to really annoy you
Another option would be to buy a commercial tool like OpsHub that will manage the synchronization and provide better conflict resolution. That will however be costly.
My advice (and I have done it every way before) is that you fix the issue not work around it. This is solvable in Healthcare, in banking, and in defence. I have been there your company is not special. Unless of course you are an insurance company and then you are too dysfunctional to save.
Anyone have some good pointers on how to get multiple teams doing concurrent asp.net development using Microsoft TFS?
i have been using subversion for the past many years now and it allowed my team to work freely without exclusively locking files and doing auto merges when possible (like 99% of the time)
but this all falls apart when my new team is forced to use TFS with exclusive locks...
any thoughts?
i am trying to get three development teams working on a big project together and want to do it with branching so we don't over-write changes and work efficiently.
TFS can work without exclusive locks. Seriously. If you CAN work with it (as in: non-exclusive locks have their own share of problems), TFS will work like that.
For many scenarios, though, non-exclusive checkouts simply do not work (logically) because the merging is too complicated.
i am trying to get three development
teams working on a big project
together and want to do it with
branching so we dont over-write
changes and work efficiently.
Non answerable. Generally I would say this is total overkill, but it really depends on the scenario you work in and the langauge you develop in (example: easier to do with WPF than with WinForms). if you work on a website, then - it may be problematic. If you work on a large financial applicaiotn, you may not have too many people trying to check out the same files anyway.
This is totally depending on the context whith you do not provide.
I am currently creating a business case for rolling out TFS 2010 as our source control and bug/release management tool.
We currently use OnTime for our bug tracking software and subversion for our SCM.
I was wondering what advantages TFS 2010 has over OnTime?
I have done some thinking so far and would love to hear responses:
TFS 2010 allows linking changesets->work items->builds
TFS 2010 provides greater customisation of workflow than OnTime
TFS 2010 is integrated into the Visual Studio IDE - This requires less apps to be open and less window flicking
Thanks in advance.
TFS is one of the least intuitive Version Control systems I have ever had the misfortune to have to use. It may have numerous "bullet point" advantages over OnTime (and other comparable systems), in terms of raw feature-lists and capabilities, but the key factor is whether it can fit in with your working processes.
My experience with TFS is that you will be required to adapt to the TFS way of working, because adapting TFS to your way of working will be impossible or too difficult to justify.
We recently reviewed a number of possible alternatives to replace a system comprising SVN and a manual bug-tracking system (Excel spreadsheets). On-Time was evaluated but deemed too expensive and complex.
In the end we opted to continue using SVN, but drastically revised (simplified) our repository structures and chose to combine SVN with the FogBugz issue tracking system. The integration between these two systems was fairly rudimentary "out-of-the-box", but required only a little effort on our part to achieve the much closer level of integration we desired. Certainly far LESS effort than my previous experience of a TFS roll-out involved.
Our SVN/FogBugz system is also now integrated with a FinalBuilder build automation suite.
The result is a system that not only fits our working practices perfectly (since we devised the means by which the systems would integrate to achieve that) but which is also infinitely adaptable as our working practices evolve.
I think that it really depends on the size of your team(s), and what you want out of source control.
I used bugzilla in combination with Perforce for a couple of years and found that both were really very good at their own individual things while working in a very small team (2-3 people), but the suffered from a lack of integration between them and from some little idiosyncrasies that took time to get used to.
I recently moved to a new job where TFS is used extensively. There are 4 main teams in this company with 10-12 developers in each, split into further project teams below that level, and it is in this kind of environment that TFS really shines imo. It's biggest advantages in my view are:
1) The integration with Visual Studio - it's not just a case of having less windows open, but it really does speed things up and make your life easier. Things like VS automatically checking out files for you as you work (no issues with accidental checkouts due to lockless editing), being able to synronise local + TFs builds, being able to quickly compare the local version against previous ones..yes you can get 3rd party plugins to integrate but none to this level and with the same stability.
2) The communication features - simple things like integraton with Live Messenger (provided you configure TFS correctly) are great for large teams. We use WLM to communicate accross the office and for collaboration as its just quicker than walking over to someone else every time you need to ask a quick question.
3) Linking builds/changelists to tasks - Yes other SCMs do this but again it's just done in a very nice, integrated fashion..I guess it's nothing special to TFS but personally I like how it tracks this.
4) Ease of merging/lockless editing. I've had experience with some other merge tools and the TFS one works nicely enough, making merging after concurrent editing pretty simple. It's very similar to perforce in this respect, but also with a usually pretty effective auto-merge tool which I use for tiny edits that I know cannot cause any potential issues with edits other developers are working on.
5) Auto building/build management. Working with a couple of large solutions containing 20-30 projects that depend on each other, this is a godsend. We have it set to queue up a build every 20 minutes IF something has changed, and when one has happened its listed in the history log..so easy to see when you need to update your local libraries.
I don't have any experience with configuring it other than build management, but I have heard that this is the worst part of TFS..that its a bit of a pain to get everything running correctly.
So, translating that to a business case..I'd say that if you are a Microsoft software house with large/multiple teams, then the time savings and productivity improvements that you will see as a result of the above features are worth the investment in setting it up. Its free to use in most cases as you will probably have a MSDN subscription (maybe some CAL issues but i'm not sure) so your biggest cost will be in user training and configuration.
Firstly, I would suggest to consider what is your primary concern, what is the problem that you are tying to solve by rolling out TFS.
In terms of version control I would recommend the blog post from Martin Fowler on Version Control Tools and a follow up results of a version control systems survey. Admittedly this might be and is a subjective view of the subject but one that seems to be pretty popular. TFS clearly looses in comparison to other Version Control Systems.
I currently work with TFS2008 and we have migrated from SourceSafe and IBM ClearCase/ClearQuest and there is no doubt that TFS is far better then any of the previous tool, still it has its serious shortcomings and the new version will only partially address those.
Addressing the individual point you have raised:
TFS allows to link builds with changesets and work items, but so many other systems
I have not used OnTime but the workflow customisation can be both an advantage and a hindrance. Potentially, there might be a lot of work involved in creating a custom process template and you would still need a sensible UI on top of it (Team Explorer or Web Access might not be sufficient)
Integration with Visual Studio is an advantage but there are add-ons to Visual Studio that allow integration with other source control providers
On the advantages of TFS I would probably mention
Distributed builds and separate build agents - if you do many builds
Full integration with Visual Studio via the Team Explorer
Extensive reporting infrastructure (though you can only take full advantage of it when using MSTest for all the testing)
SharePoint collaboration site for each project
Given the substantial cost of rolling out full TFS installation I would really consider what real business benefit would this solution give you that others don't.
Not shure about TFS, but the UI of OnTime is kind of non intuitive.
Also I dont like that you have different fields for Bugs and Tasks. Of course you can always add your own fields, but the default layout should be ready to use.
We endet up using only "Bugs" even if it is a task.
I dont say its a bad product, but if TFS has a better UI for bugtracking now (which it hadnt 4years ago when I had to use it and hated it ), then this would be an argument for TFS.
Sorry to hear that you want to get rid of SVN. Thats a hard decision.
I'm not sure about the licensing for the Axios OnTime but if you have an MSDN subscription then it's no additional cost. See the blog post here
I've been using TFS 2008 only for version control and while it's a nice upgrade from VSS some things that we're tyring to do aren't exactly in line with what is expected. That said, I've written a quick little web app that fills in those gaps. It was pretty easy to develop against using the API and there's lots of addons to help with specific tasks.
Probably not the answer you want to hear, but I'd be doing my damnedest to make a business case against TFS.
In any event, my general advice would be to try it out yourself (or in a small team) on some very small, but real project - maybe some tool you need on a once-off basis, code that can be thrown away or easily migrated to another system because it's small. There's nothing like actually using the system!
I have used OnTime and Subversion. I have not used TFS as bug tracker, but I've used it for source control. The source control part of it is basically still the bad old Visual SourceSafe. If you are currently using Subversion you will be swearing your head off any time you need to rename a file or, heaven forbid, delete a file and then create one with the same name - never mind any branching or merging. It's hard to convey in a post just how primitive and fragile it is as a source control system - that's why you really have to use it. You'll see what I mean when you find yourself stuck with a file you can neither check in nor delete and some meaningless error. Not that Subversion is perfect - but it's a decade ahead of VSS!
The workflow part of TFS, which I've only briefly played with, seems very "heavy" to me. That is, it really restricts the user to that workflow and requires a lot of steps that are often unnecessary. This stuff can help, but it can also just as easily get in the way. A good system provides the workflow when it's needed, but allows you to bypass it when it would just get in the way. When we used OnTime, we found that even its relatively unobtrusive workflow was often just more trouble than it was worth. Of course, this all depends on the specifics of your situation. How are you using OnTime workflows now and what do you want out of TFS that OnTime doesn't provide?
Linking changesets to bugs can be done with Subversion as well. It supports some extensibility mechanism - I don't remember the details, but FogBugz uses it (we switched to it after OnTime). Linking the to builds can be done by adding a simple svn tag command to your build script. Visual Studio integration can be done with VisualSVN.
The cost is also a huge downside of TFS. It is very expensive for what it does, especially when you take into account how well it does it. Yes, it's "free" if you have to have an MSDN subscription for every developer anyway - but do you have to, without TFS? Subversion is free, full stop. OnTime and FogBugz are far more reasonably priced.
I would strongly recommend against TFS. I once tried to restore the source code from a crashed instance, but I gave up after a few days, so source code was lost (= it failed to do the one thing a VCS should do). Of course, I might have done something wrong, but it's not easy to get everything right when the restore guide is two miles long, and it really is something that should happen so rarely that nobody is experienced with it.
Now I use Subversion/Trac, which gets the job done (and customizing the workflow in Trac is so easy it's not fun, compared to TFS).
For the time being, avoid TFS!
I would stick with SVN + FinalBuilder and then choose between FogBugz or CounterSoft Gemini.