Daily Archives: April 5, 2015

MZ-Tools Articles Series, TFS Extensibility

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Get Git Branches, Commits, Changes, Conflicts, etc. in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio

The next five articles / samples that I have created about Team Explorer extensibility are about getting the information contained in the Git-related pages of the Team Explorer of Visual Studio 2013.

The Branches page contains the current branch and the Published and Unpublished sections:

TeamExplorerGitBranches

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.Extensibility.IBranchesExt interface. See the article:

HOWTO: Get the Git Branches in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The Commits page contains the Incoming Commits and Outgoing Commits sections:

TeamExplorerGitCommits

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.Extensibility.ICommitsExt interface. See the article:

HOWTO: Get the Git Commits in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The Changes page contains the Included Changes, Excluded Changes and Untracked Files sections:

TeamExplorerGitChanges

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.Extensibility.IChangesExt interface. See the article:

HOWTO: Get the Git Changes in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The Resolve Conflicts page contains the Conflicts and Resolved Conflicts sections:

TeamExplorerGitConflicts

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.Extensibility.IConflictsExt interface. See the article:

HOWTO: Get the Git Conflicts in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The Commit Details page contains the commit properties and Changes section:

TeamExplorerGitCommitDetails

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Git.Controls.Extensibility.ICommitDetailsExt interface. See the article:

HOWTO: Get the Git Commit Details in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

MZ-Tools Articles Series, TFS Extensibility

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Get the Builds / Pending Changes in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The two first samples that I have created about Team Explorer extensibility are about getting the information contained in the Builds and Pending Changes pages.

The Builds page contains three sections: My Builds, Favorite Builds Definitions and All Build Definitions:

TeamExplorerBuilds

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Controls.Extensibility.IBuildsPageExt interface. See the following article:

HOWTO: Get the Builds in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

The Pending Changes page contains the Comment, Related Work Items, Included Changes and Excluded Changes sections:

TeamExplorerPendingChanges

To get that information from a package you need to use the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Controls.Extensibility.IPendingChangesEx interface. See the following article:

HOWTO: Get the Pending Changes in the Team Explorer of Visual Studio from a package

TFS Extensibility

New TFS Extensibility resources added to VSX site

A question in the MSDN VSX forum prompted me to investigate another area, Team Explorer extensibility, which I am not very familiar with yet. After solving the question, I wanted to learn more about Team Explorer / TFS Extensibility and I found quite a few resources that I didn’t have listed on this VSX site. Some resources that I have updated are:

  • In the Overview page, I have added an image from the MSDN documentation to illustrate the several client models, and clarified that you need the Team Explorer to get the client libraries even if you want a standalone application to connect to TFS.
  • In the Downloads page, I have added the links to download the Team Explorer packages for Visual Studio 2005-2013, which, by the previous paragraph, are required to get the client libraries for standalone applications that don’t extend the Team Explorer. The client model object assemblies and namespaces are quite confusing because some are Microsoft.TeamFoundation.* and some others are Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.*, and are located in at least three folders (ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0, ReferenceAssemblies\v4.5, and PrivateAssemblies of the root folder Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio <version>\Common7\IDE). The MSDN documentation for Visual Studio 2012 has a nice mapping between assemblies and namespaces.
  • In the Articles section, I have added a couple of articles to extend the Team Explorer of Visual Studio 2012 / 2013, and an impressive collection of 56 articles about TFS API by MVP fellow Shai Raiten.

In the next posts, I will contribute myself explaining how to get information about the different pages / sections of the Team Explorer.