The much anticipated Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools – October 2008 Release is finally available for download. Before you say anything, yes it is November, but believe me it is worth the extra wait!
You may remember Brian first publicly mentioned what was in store for us in this Power Tool release back on the 1st October in his comprehensive blog post. Soon thereafter they were released to the Team System MVP community for feedback and let’s just say we threw everything at them and found some things that needed to be fixed.
You can find the download page for the power tools at
Here’s a list of what’s in this release.
Team Members (NEW!)
- Adds a new node to under each Team Project to the Team Explorer called “Team Members” that identifies people and who work on the project. It serves as a “pivot point” for information and operations on people and teams.
Windows Shell Extension (NEW!)
- Allows core version control operations within Windows Explorer without using Team Explorer.
PowerShell Support (NEW!)
- Provides a PowerShell pipeline and cmdlets for TFS. Initial support is for core version control operations.
TFPT (Updated)
- tfpt searchcs – The Search Changesets Power Tool brings up a dialog from which the user can search for changesets that match specific combination of criteria including server path, committed date range, committed user, check-in comments, and check-in notes.
- tfpt unshelve /undo – Finds all pending changes in your workspace that match the changes in the shelveset and undoes them (including deleting the local files for pending adds).
Help Improvements
- Microsoft reformatted most of the help docs as MHT files. There is a Start Menu link that opens an index to the docs for each of the tools that have the updated files. The new format should be easier to read and print nicely.
Setup Improvements
- Power Tool installation model installs for “everyone” instead of just for “me”. This was required for the Windows Shell Extensions and will also make install better experience going forward.
- Setup should now automatically upgrade any prior *released* TFS 2008 Power Tool version (Dec ’07, Mar ’08, Jul ’08)
- Note: Because TFS Power Tool setup is now per-machine instead of per-user, setup will block if other users have older versions of the Power Tools installed. A dialog will be presented listing all users with installed versions of the Power Tools. The Power Tools need to be uninstalled for those users. There is a document on the download site of you have problems.
Well, what are you waiting for? Get downloading 🙂