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TFS 2017's Team Explorer Solution Has Issues, It Seems

A Team Explorer-like solution that was excluded from TFS 2017 when Visual Studio 2017 launched is now available, but there are still issues with quality. Plus, Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 4 is now generally available.

A Team Explorer-like solution that was excluded from Team Foundation Server 2017 when Visual Studio 2017 launched at the beginning of March was made available a month later. Since then, there have been some quality issues being reported by developers.

Here's the story, in a nutshell: When Team Foundation Server 2017 was launched with Visual Studio 2017 back in early March, it didn't include a Team Explorer-like solution. Earlier this month, that issue seemed to be rectified, according to a short blog post from Microsoft's Brian Harry.

"We didn't release it because we needed to create a new version of it based on the new Visual Studio installer technology that was introduced in VS 2017 and we just didn't have time  to do that before we released," he wrote, when the update went out around April 5.

A post from Microsoft ALM principal program manager Jeremy Epling noted that developers had reported some issues with the Team Explorer solution. "Most of the bugs stem from 2 sets of changes: a major refactor of the authentication library and moving the Git experience from Libgit2 to Git for Windows," he said."Those changes enabled us to add new features, as well as other Git features we haven't released yet, but the changes weren't high quality," he added, further explaining that more thorough use case testing would be performed as well as the development of preview builds that brought in earlier developer community engagement.

As such, Eplings said that fixes would be forthcoming in Updates 2 and 3. Epling's post lists a number of issues that currently have the ALM team's attention.

On a side note: The ALM team a few weeks ago posted the full release to web of Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 4 that was released as a preview back in March. TFS 2015.4 includes a slew of fixes, mainly for agile, testing, and administration issues. What's notable is this interesting tidbit from a blog post from Microsoft's Brian Harry on the release: "This will likely be the last release in the TFS 2015 line. TFS 2017 shipped almost 6 months ago and we are already hard at work on TFS 2017 Update 2."

The final release notes on TFS 2015.4 are here.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

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