Team Foundation Sidekicks

MSBuild Sidekick documentation is available!

When we released version 2.1 of the Sidekick, the original post failed to mention one pretty significant feature available in version 2.1. The new installer includes not only the application itself but also the manual (in PDF format) to help you leverage MSBuild Sidekick functionality.

The document contains description of UI elements, large number of helpful how-to hints and walkthroughs with application usage. It is accessible upon installation of the application through Start->MSBuild Sidekick menu (or just locate it in the application folder in Program Files).

We have received several requests for better documentation while in fact the documentation was there! So hopefully that post will help some users out there.

Get Team Foundation Sidekicks 2.1!

Only three months after release of version 2.0, we made available the next version of Team Foundation Sidekicks. And even though it is labeled 2.1 it contains lots of bug fixes and some important features.

Features

• Code Review Sidekick: code review by work item is available (selecting changesets through associated work items)
• Code Review Sidekick: list of associated work items is available for changesets reviewed
• Code Review Sidekick: filtering of items revisions list by user or file name is available
• Shelveset Sidekick: saving of the contents for the whole shelveset is supported
• Labels Sidekick, History Sidekick, Code Review Sidekick: View changeset details is supported for all lists containing changesets
• Visual Studio integration: all Sidekicks are available in stand-alone application are available in Visual Studio (through Tools->Team Foundation Sidekicks menu)
• Visual Studio integration: operations on build types are supported for TFS 2008 custom build type files locations

Bug fixes

• BUGFIX: to configure Sidekicks on Vista requires administrative priviliges. In 2.1 we made a change to use Documents and Settings folder for user-specific configuration 
• BUGFIX: VSIP for VS 2008 generates error on load in Output toolwindow
• BUGFIX: VSIP dynamic history enabled together with auto-hide History toolwindow may lead to intermittent error messages
• BUGFIX: When installing on workstation with VS2005 and VS2008, only VS2008 version of VSIP gets registered
• BUGFIX: Multiple selection with keyboard on certain lists is not possible
• UI improvements

The features and bugs fixed in this release were mainly driven by the community (as we got huge amount of feedback after 2.0 release). Thanks for bug spotting and feature suggestions go to Arnold Jan van der Burg, James Glenn, Grant Holiday, David Jansen, Jeff Walsh, Chris McLeod, Nathan Cripps, Ryan Adler, Sam Gardiner, Vaas Rudolf, Gary Winningham and Martin Huser. And this release could not happen without Roman Klevcov and Nikolay Surdo working on it in "trenches". 

 As always, let us have a piece of your mind through the blog or by email (to tfs_at_attrice_dot_info).

MSBuild Sidekick 2.1 is available

Talk about Fools' Day joke - but on 1st of April we have released version 2.1 of MSBuild Sidekick. This version contains quite a few bug fixes, but we managed to put several new features in it too:

• When .Net schema version is selected in Build Options dialog, the application now will use the appropriate set of MSBuild assemblies for the build (previous version used 3.5 to build 2.0 schema projects when .Net 3.5 Framework was installed). That way build can be performed with exactly the same version of the engine (no matter versions of .Net installed)
• Find and Refactoring dialogs all contain XML source windows and all list views are sortable
• The application supports registry properties for MSBuild 3.5 schema projects
• Auto version update is implemented

The new version is available here; if you have purchased license for 2.0 you can upgrade to version 2.1 at no cost. And as always, if you have any questions, concerns or feedback, you do not have to buy a license to drop us a line.