Visual Studio 2008 Team System Path Length

Here's a quick tip about file path lengths in Visual Studio 2008, Team System. I have been tweaking the process templates for our rollout of this system and came across a file path length limitation.

My default project location for VSTS was the typical location under My Documents/Visual Studio 2008/Projects. Well, if you keep that location, add one or two folders for organization, then you'll bump into this issue.

This is particularly annoying when attempting to upload a new process template. All the images, etc., are pathed in the XML...and that path then exceeds the length that VSTS can handle. When that happens, the upload fails and you have to scour the logs to figure out why.

So, if you are just starting out with Visual Studio 2008, be sure to create a default location for your projects under a very short root path. I prefer to use c:\action. That keeps my projects at the top of the folder structure. They are easy to find and the path length is very short.

On a related note, let's say you've created a project and added it to source control, but now you want to change the local path (similar to setting the working folder in VSS). It's easy to do, but tucked away. You need to select File --> Source Control --> Workspaces. Edit the workspace you want to move. Easy enough, but not readily apparent.

vsts process template modifications

Here's a little tidbit that might come in handy if you find yourself modifying a process template for Visual Studio Team System. Say you're going to add a new field to a work item type. Seems simple enough. You step through it until you're faced with a dialog box for the newfield. Each required field on the dialog box seems self explanatory, except for RefName.

What the heck is a RefName?

There is no help on the dialog box. The next logical thing is to look for an example to help you out. You click cancel on the input box and look at the list of RefNames for the pre-existing fields. Those certainly look like namespaces to me. So, what is the name space to use for this new field? Is it based on field type? Is it a control namespace?

Maybe it was a lack of coffee that morning, but for some reason it stumped me for a few minutes. I'm sure you've all figured it out already, but just in case you haven't, here's the answer. The key is that it is a namespace, and just like any other namespace you create for your code, you simply create your own. YourCompanyName.FieldName is a good start. Pick a namespace that makes sense not only for this field, but one that can be used for future additions. Once you've decided on the namespace, simply type it into the text box and off you go.

Microsoft Sponsored Architect Council in Bellevue

I went to the Architect Council Tuesday. I was able to get a preview of IIS 7.0, SQL 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. I'll be discussing VS2008 in much more detail later. The big news with IIS 7.0 (at least for me) was shared configuration. This is a single file, called the applicationHost.config, which has all of the configuration information for IIS. If you went to IIS Manager in IIS 6.0 to configure something, you'd find that in the applicationHost.config file for IIS 7.0.

Having a single file to house this information means that you can host it on your network and have your IIS boxes in your web farm all point to the single file for configuration. No longer will you run the risk of having a box or two in your farm not match the configuration of your other boxes. This is a huge win.

The boxes using this applicationHost.config file are watching it for changes. Once a change is saved, the boxes pick up the change and recycle at the appropriate level. For example, if you were to make an IIS-wide change, IIS would recycle, but if you were to make a change to an application pool, only that app pool would recycle.

Another big win for IIS is the integrated pipeline. This is important for static content that needed to be served up through asp.net before to take advantage of things like membership or caching. Now you can just select the components you want in your pipeline. I'll go into this in more detail in a future post, too.

One last win is the failed request tracing. This allows you to set up an XML dump based on whatever criteria you specify. For example, you could set up your site to watch for 500 errors and dump to XML whenever the error occurs. This gives us better investigation opportunities when things go wrong.

All-in-all a good day. Well worth the time. I made a few important contacts and I learned a couple of items.

Visual Studio 2008 Available!

Visual Studio 2008 is available for download at MSDN subscriptions: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/bb608344.aspx

devconnections 2007 - las vegas

I just returned from DevConnections 2007. It was well worth the time and money. Overall the conference was a great success. It offered a lot of great training. The rooms were large with perfect A/V setups. The sessions were 75 minutes each, offering just enough detail to get you started in the right direction with a handful of knowledge nuggets.

I would definitely recommend DevConn. It had all the benefits of TechEd without the trip to the East Coast, nor the added expense of two additional days of training. The three days DevConn offered was perfect. My brain wasn’t fried by the end, yet I was able to get a lot good training in the three days.

Trip Highlight
The best session was that with Juval Lowy. I first saw Juval about five years ago at a local conference when he taught a great session on test driven development. This time I listened to him teach about service-oriented development. It was awesome. Definitely the best of the bunch.

I'll detail more about this session and the trip in general in future posts. If you ever get a chance to go to DevConnections, TechEd, or the PDC, definitely go. They are a great time and full of information.