I received an email from a coworker today. She received a new computer and was having trouble viewing work items in Visual Studio. When she tried to open one up, she would receive the following error.

Could not load type 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.WorkItemTypeDeniedOrNotExistException' from assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.

She had Visual Studio 2008 SP1 installed, and she was obviously connecting to Team Foundation Server. I then decided to look at my version of Team Explorer and compare it to hers. In my installed products (under Visual Studio, Help, About) I had “Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer - ENU Service Pack 1 (KB945140)” and she did not.

The updates to Team Explorer come from Visual Studio 2008 SP1, so my best guess is that her system had SP1 installed before Team Explorer was installed. If you ever encounter this problem, the fix is to reinstall Visual Studio SP1.

Have you ever debugged a large project you didn’t create? If so, you’ve probably gotten lost in the vast jungle of code that was once some poor programmer’s paradise. This vast jungle is full of cannibalistic tribes and wild animals waiting to tear you to pieces. Your only hope for survival is your ability to navigate the solution tree, relying on your wits to circumvent the illogical paths of code that “Go To Definiton” has guided you down.

Luckily, Visual Studio 2008 will provide you a guide if you ask for it. Open Tools | Options… | Projects and Solutions | General. Then, check the box for “Track Active Item in Solution Explorer.”

After you have pressed okay in this dialog, when you have a file opened in the editor, the Solution Tracker will automatically select it. The one catch I’ve found is that if the project is contained within a solution folder, the folder must be open.

Yesterday, I wrote about running GacUtil from within the AfterBuild target, due to some constraints with MPF and T4.

I discovered that the path I provided was wrong. It's the only GacUtil.exe under the Microsoft.NET folder, but it won't register the assembly. Since I wasn't sure which path I should be using, I used the GacUtil task from MSBuild Community Tasks. Here is the relevant code it uses to retrieve the path to gacutil.exe:

protected override string GenerateFullPathToTool()
{
    return ToolLocationHelper.GetPathToDotNetFrameworkSdkFile(ToolName, TargetDotNetFrameworkVersion.Version20);
}
protected override string ToolName
{
    get { return "gacutil.exe"; }
}

regpkg : warning : The Assembly specified at [Path]\[Assembly]cannot be loaded because an alternate copy with the same identity exists in the Assembly probing path at 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\[Assembly]\1.0.0.0__7c2bf94927fd6e28\[Assembly]. The Assembly at 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\[Assembly]\1.0.0.0__7c2bf94927fd6e28\[Assembly] will be loaded instead.
regpkg : error : Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.
  Could not load file or assembly '[Assembly], Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7c2bf94927fd6e28' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBuildCommunityTasks\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets" />
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
   <GacUtil Command="Uninstall" Assemblies="$(TargetName)" ContinueOnError="true"/>
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild" DependsOnTargets="RegisterManagedPackage">
  <!-- .wix is specified instead of .wxi because the RegPkg task requires it to generate the wix script. -->
   <RegPkg ItemToRegister="$(TargetPath)" ProductVersion="$(TargetVSVersion)" SDKVersion="$(VsSDKVersion)" OutputFile="..\Installer\RegistryEntries.wix" Unregister="false" UseCodeBase="false" UseRanu="false" />
   <GacUtil Assemblies="$(TargetPath)"/>
</Target>

Due to circumstances involving a MPF package and Text Templating (t4), I had to add an assembly to the GAC after compiling if I wanted to be able to run the generator in the VS Experimental. So, I added the following line to the AfterBuild target of the csproj file:

<Exec Command="gacutil /i $(TargetPath)"/>

Unfortunately, I received the following error when I compiled: 

Error 155 The command "gacutil /i [PathToDll]" exited with code 9009. C:\Projects\AperioVisualStudioAddins\AperioVisualStudioAddins\AperioVisualStudioPackage.csproj 202 2 [DllName]

The problem is that when Visual Studio is building the project, it does not have access to the path. The way to make it work is to specify the fully qualified path and filename to gacutil.

<Exec Command="C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\gacutil.exe /i $(TargetPath)"/>

Brian Harry has posted a list of features that will be in the upcoming beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 Team System. Unfortunately, the date of release for beta 1 has not been announced yet.

Architecture (http://blogs.msdn.com/camerons/)

• Architecture Explorer
• Layer diagram
• Use case designer
• Activity designer
• Component diagram
• Logical class designer
• Sequence diagram
• Modeling project system
• UML Model explorer
• Architecture validation during build

Development & Database (http://blogs.msdn.com/habibh/)

• Historical debugging
• Test impact analysis
• Improved code analysis
• Improved profiling (especially multi-tier)
• Database extensibility

Lab Management (http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chatterjee, http://blogs.msdn.com/lab_management)

• Multi-tier Environment creation and management
• Automated deployment
• Easily manage machine pools
• Network fencing
• Checkpoints

Test (http://blogs.msdn.com/amit_chatterjee, http://blogs.msdn.com/james_whittaker)

• Test planning
• Test case management
• Test prioritization
• Run management & reporting
• Project quality reports
• Manual test execution
• Diagnostic recording (environment, video, etc)
• UI Automation recording
• Coded UI tests

TFS (my blog http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry)

• Work item hierarchy & linking
• Improved Agile template
• MOSS & WSS Dashboards
• Simplified reporting
• Improved support for parallel development
• Rollback
• Build queuing and pooling
• Gated checkin
• Simplified setup
• Scale out of web and data tiers
• Admin console
• Project move/archive/restore

One of the things that confused me about the attributes used to decorate a Visual Studio were the hardcoded guids in the examples. I didn't know where they came from or what I could use. In fact, I had the impression I had to generate my own guid for each definition like how you need to assign one for an editor factory.

It turns out that these are defined guids that you must use for certain activities. They're defined in Microsoft.VisualStudio.VSConstants as static readonly. Like String.Empty, this means you can't use them in an attribute decoration and is why you see string literals instead. Since I couldn't find a list of the actual guids, and I needed them, I wrote a quick console app to retrieve them from the VSConstants class. I then placed them in constant, string form in my own class. Here they are in case you need them as well.

The managed package framework for Visual Studio eats exceptions. I discovered this while building my own editor.

I started with the package that the wizard creates for you, but I needed different designer rather than the rich text box it gives you. I initially attempted to gut the designer and implement my own functionality. However, it kept throwing a strange exception on me that I could not correct.

I reverted back to the designer that was there, then created a DecisionTablePane class and implemented the interfaces that I thought I would need: IOleCommandTarget, IVsWindowPane, IVsTextLinesEvents. I left the NotImplementedExceptions in place thinking that I could then see what was being called. I changed the editor factory to instantiate the new editor. This worked, and I will refactor later to remove the classes I no longer need; I'm keeping them around to use as a guide.

I tried to open the file type I had registered with the editor, but nothing happened. I thought that maybe I missed an interface, but I couldn't find anything. I then stuck a breakpoint on the method I suspected was being called, and it got there. The exceptions were being consumed without any error reporting. This will make it difficult to debug my Visual Studio package. If something doesn't work, I may not even know it.

When developing plugins for Visual Studio 2008, your testing is done in what's known as an experimental hive. It's essentially Visual Studio running in a testing environment. This keeps your unfinished plugins from being added to your "real" Visual Studio environment.

Unfortunately, this experimental hive tends to become junky. After going through tutorials, you're bound to have all kinds of unnecessary elements added to the IDE. I spent some time trying to clean this out, and I discovered that the Visual Studio 2008 SDK includes a tool to do this. However, its parameters weren't exactly clear and cause me some grief until I got it right.

Here are the commands that work for me:

"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK\VisualStudioIntegration\Tools\Bin\vsregex.exe" GetOrig 9.0 exp RANU
"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"  /setup /rootsuffix Exp /ranu

The first command clears out your experimental hive then copies your regular registry keys and user profile files over. After I did this, I found that all my templates were missing. The second command fixes that problem.

Axialis has released a free add-in for VS 2008 that creates the 256x256 icons used in Vista. Download IconWorkshop™ Lite and free yourself from the 32x32 bit tyranny!

Here's the download page:

http://www.axialis.com/download/iwlite.html