What happened to the TFS 2013 Build Templates?

I have had a couple people asking me “where are the build templates in TFS 2013?”.

Well they have been removed!
Don’t worry, they are still available though …

By default, they are now simply stored in TFS and not in the repository.

When creating a build definition you will notice that the default build templates can simply be selected (as per usual).

When you need to use a custom template, or modify the existing templates you can simple download the template,

make your changes and then upload the updated build template to the repository as per normal.

Microsoft has reworked things in the build templates, simplifying it quite a lot. Hopefully altering your build processes will no longer be such a daunting task!

TFS 2013 Power Tools

Finally! It felt really odd not having the trusted power tools available when working in VS / TFS 2013

• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 32-bit
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 MSSCCI Provider 64-bit
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013 Build Extensions

Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 RC Released

Some big news!! The release candidate for VS & TFS 2013 was released last night.

There are a couple of really nice features added since the preview. One of my favourites is the charting ability for work items. I have done quite a few custom TFS reports, and even though this may reduce the number of jobs that I have, it is VERY cool nonetheless…

The list of things that have been added is fairly large, hopefully I will blog about it in the future.

Note that this does have a “go-live” license, so Microsoft will provide support if you decide to be an early adopter and upgrade your production environments.

Feel free to contact us if you need more information around upgrade options...