Source Server support on VMs with VMWare Lab Manager and TFS? - visual-studio-2010

My company is interested in better integrating our investment in VMWare with our TFS deployment. Currently the company is running TFS2005 SP1, VS2010, and we have a sizeable SAN that we would like to use in environment reproduction similar to what is offered in TFS2010 Lab Management.
Of the features offered by TFS2005, we are currently leveraging only TF Version Control--work items and build automation are handled by separate systems. However, we would like to use the TFS-integrated Symbol/Source server in order to accurately debug the different versions of our product, and that's where we're running into difficulty.
The VMs deployed in VMWare are not joined to the corporate domain, and this means that we run into difficulty when attemping to grab source code information via Source Server and the "tf.exe view" command.
If devenv is run on the VM, it can't authenticate a domain account, and tf.exe view fails when grabbing source info.
If devenv is run on the developer desktop and debugging is done with remote debugger, the vm's local user account fails to access the share exposed by Symbol Server and can't load symbols to begin with, much less retrieve source.
Has anyone done this before?

Yes - You can still do this. If you are using Windows 7 (and I believe Windows Vista) you can always add the domain credentials to the "Credentials Manager" in the Control Panel. This will help it authenticate for the TFS URL whenever it needs to talk to TFS.
BTW, I have a blog post discussing the Symbol Server and Source Server features of TFS 2010 available here: http://bit.ly/SymbolServerTFS

Related

Why is latest Xamarin needed on local TFS server for CI?

The requirements on the following page state that you need to install Visual Studio with Xamarin on your local TFS server to setup Xamarin CI builds:
https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/ci/intro_to_ci/
topography of the CI
This is a real pain. We have lots of developers that rely on our local TFS server, most of whom don't do any Xamarin development. As such, any changes are heavily scrutinized. This often leads to us not installing the latest VS/Xamarin releases, as it's considered too risky for this vital bit of infrastructure.
We could have a Windows build machine with VS and Xamarin installed, that is connected to a Mac build machine. We'd be free to update the Windows and Mac build machines regularly, without the fear of compromising the TFS server. Is this possible? If not, why not?
Thanks in advance.
That diagram can't be right. There is no reason why you'd need VS or Xamarin installed on your TFS app tier.
I think it's showing a simplified configuration where the Windows build agent is installed alongside the app tier. That is a supported setup but is never, ever recommended by anyone, for exactly the reasons why you don't want to do it.
The diagram is simplified. You don't need to install anything on your TFS server. What you do instead is to install a Build Agent on a separate machine or virtual machine.
The installation details for the TFS 2017 / VSTS build agent v2 can be found in the official visual studio documentation.
The procedure is similar for both TFS and VSTS, where you generate an access token in TFS/VSTS, then simply enter the url for the TFS/VSTS instance when running the build agent install script, along with the access token.
There are build agents for Windows, Linux and macOS, so it is up to you how you configure how iOS builds are made.

VS 2013 Setup Projects Works on one server and does not on another

We recently migrated from VS 2008 to VS 2013 including a set of setup projects. One of the setup projects is meant to install a web application. It has one custom action that is meant to check the connection to the database. The code of the custom action has not been touched during the migration and the .msi works perfectly when generated from VS 2008. When I built the .msi from VS 2013 it works perfectly well when installing on our local development server, and throw an error saying that it cannot connect to the db when rolling out in the clients environment.
I'd really appreciate if anyone can point me into direction of search here. I know that I'm passing a correct connection string, and .msi generated from VS 2008 can connect to that db from the same server.
Visual Studio custom actions that are installed for Everyone will run with the local system account. Connecting to a SQL DB will often fail because the DB doesn't allow the system account to connect, or because the DB is on a network share and the system account has no network privileges.
So it could fail because of the security settings of the DB or because the DB is on a network, and it may be nothing to do with the server. It might also connect if the install runs with a Just me setting because the custom actions then will run with the installing user's credentials. There may also be issues with architecture because servers are 64-bit and the 32-bit subsystem is optional, and you didn't say whether you install was x64 or your custom action code.

Cannot connect TFS

I want to connect to TFS through the Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2015.
So, my problem is that I cannot connect because of a wrong authentication (valid username and password, valid privileges).
I think the reason for that is the Domain but I never joined one because I use a normal version of Windows 10 Enterprise. Could it depend on installed features like WCF? I did really intensive research but I'm not able to find any information to solve my problem.
Here is a screenshot of the Login-Dialog:
On premise TFS only supports Windows auth (either local or domain).
If your TFS server and VS are installed on the same machine, you could use your local account with enough permission to connect TFS server directly.
If your TFS server and VS are installed on the different machine, and since you haven't joined domain. Suggest you to join domain : This is the easiest to setup, user-wise. All you have to do is be a member of the domain and a member in a team project. Another option is using Visual Studio Team Service (TFS in the cloud) for this. It's currently free and uses Microsoft live accounts instead. Which you can access it everywhere on the internet.
First I want to thank you for your support.
I'm sorry that this comes late but I already solved my problem.
I obviously just forgot to put a Backslash in front of my username so that I don't use the domain of my local computer.

SharePoint Development in a small firm

We work for a small firm and we just started getting few SharePoint Projects.
Setup what we have done:
Purchased a new server and installed SharePoint 2010, SQL 2008R2, Visual Studio 2010 in the same server.
Created the application in the SharePoint Central Administration.
Developers directly login to server built the project using Visual Studio. (In server, only 2 ppl can login and work)
Issue:
1. We started getting 2 more projects, and the count of developers became more.
We need to know how to set up an environment where all the developers can work.
Also need to know if there is any way that they can work from local and then we can push the application to the server.
We do not have budget to get one more server and install TFS, so need to know if there is any other repository where we can make the above task possible.
Any help from all you people will me greatful.
Expecting a reply at the earliest.
Regards,
Alex
Depending on what specification laptops/PC's you have you may be able to create a virtual machine to do the development within. All the licenses here would be covered by MSDN subscription(if your devs have this) I think. VM's can get very big so what all the developers did in my last company was to have an external HD with our VM's on there, i think we were using e-sata connected external hd's
If you have TFS you should be able to connect the VM's up to this which essentially would allow you to use the build functionality to create your WSP packages ready for production(once testing has passed on your VM obviously), this package can then be dropped by TFS automatically to your production server ready for installation.
The great thing about this model is that you can have multiple VM's so if you break one you can just use a fresh one! All developers will be on a different VM but with some configuration would be working from the same source code.
Essentially this method has it's drawbacks and it's positives but i found this way was really benificial to me as i was learning how to do things and regularly needed a new VM :P
Something to note about what you have said, It is not recommended that you have VS on your production server.
Hope this helps
Truez

Automatic installer for a web app on Windows 7 (or higher)

I have a web application implemented in ASP.NET MVC3 and SQL Server 2008 Express. It's relatively small so I can deploy it in local computer of my clients (Windows 7 or higher).
Currently, I deploy it manually by create new web site in IIS, copy published files to the folder of website, install SQL Server 2008R2 and use Management Studio to restore database with some initial data.
It's OK with me but not with my clients. They can't do the same things. What I want is an automatic installer, my clients just need to click a few buttons to get all done.
Specifically, this automatic installer must do the following things:
Install SQL Server 2008R2 Express and restore the initial database.
Install IIS7 (if it's not enabled in Windows 7).
Create a new app pool (V4) and a new Web Site use this pool. Then copy published files to the folder of the Web Site.
The installler can run aspnet_regiis command and grant permission for NETWORK SERVICE account to TEMP folder. This is required for web site to run.
The installer can copy some fonts to Font folder of Windows.
I see many app can do this automatic installer, but after googling I can't find a thorough solution to try.
Please give me some advice on this. Thanks in advance!
If you want a free solution, WiX is what you need, but it will take you some time to learn using it if you never created a package with it.
A more easy to use, and also powerful, but payed tool, is Advanced Installer, you need Professional edition, but you can try it for free with the 30 days trial mode. It has predefined prerequisite for SQL Server Express, built-in support to install IIS entities, and set file/folder permissions. Bassically all the requirements you need.
To enable any IIS feature you can simply add a PowerShell script.

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