#9 - TFS with FQDN

Category : Configuring Microsoft Team Foundation Server

From Wikipedia ...

A fully qualified domain name (or FQDN) is an unambiguous domain name that specifies the exact location in the Domain Name System's tree hierarchy through to a top-level domain and finally to the root domain. Technically, a FQDN has a trailing dot (for example: somehost.example.com.), but most DNS resolvers will treat any domain name that already has a dot as being an FQDN and add the final dot needed for the root of the DNS tree.

A lot of companies will use FQDN what means that Team Foundation Server won't work with the default installation procedure. At first sight, you might think it works, but for Windows SharePoint Services and Reporting Services it won't! There's a pretty good blogpost from Buck Hodges available that guides you how to modify the default TFS configuration. Here's what I did to get TFS working with FQDN :

• Run tfsadminutil activateat MyFQDN. This command (tfsadminutil can be found in the Tools folder of the TFS installation folder) will activate the FQDN computer as the TFS application-tier server. One of the executed tasks is the modification of the global TFS web.config (config file can be found in the Web Services folder of the TFS installation folder). You may verify the TFSNameUrl setting in the configuration file. I also manually added the appsetting TfsUrlPublic with as value the http://*FQDN*:8080 to force FQDN references in e-mail notifications. Another task the command does is changing the TFS service interface. You may verify this in the tbl_service_interface table of the TfsIntegration database. All urls should now match the FQDN. Before all urls contained the netbiosname of the computer.
• Update registry settings BaseReportsUrl and ReportsService with my FQDN at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\ReportServer\80\Sites.
• For WSS 3.0 to work with TFS 2008, I still had to add an alternate access mapping (see blogpost Buck Hodges how to cope with that).

FxCop custom dictionary

If you rely on Naming Guidelines of the Static Code Analysis tool that's built into Visual Studio Team System, you might get plenty spelling error messages for words that aren't valid according to the tool (CA1704 : Identifiers should be spelled correctly). The spell checker is quite aggressive! In most of the cases these are unrecognized names that might be valid for you. To prevent that those errors pop up each time without disabling the rule(s), you might want to edit the CustomDictionary.xml file (\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop) to include your custom names/acronyms for recognition by the Static Code Analysis tool.

But in a team environment the option to edit the custom dictionary in the FxCop Application folder is not the good solution! So, what do you need to do in Visual Studio 2008 Team System :

• Add a new xml file to your project
• Go to the properties of the xml file and set the Build Action to CodeAnalysisDictionary
• Edit the xml file to add your recognized words/acronyms

This is a new feature in VS2008 - before you had to place the CustomDictionary.xml file in the project folder and that file was picked up by the FxCop tool. Here's some more info about how to edit the .xml file or check the original .xml file in the FxCop Application folder for the schema.

One month ...

July 2008 will be a mini sabbatical for me. A month ago I finally decided to take a parental leave in July : one month with no professional obligations, one month for quality time with my family & friends (especially my wife and daughter), one month to make the final preparations for the arrival of our next family member, one month for reloading my batteries, one month to increase my household help at home, one month to do some sports (running, tennis, cycling, ...) to get back in optimal shape, one month to enjoy the weather (hopefully), one month to read some books, one month to enjoy a BBQ with a good glass of wine, one month to look ahead what the future will bring, ... one month to do things that otherwise get postponed or finally don't happen!

One month will probably be too short to do whatever I intended to. It's all about managing the short period of available time for all these kind of things. Hopefully I will be able to allocate enough time for some of these things after my parental leave in July. The hard work will only start once I get back to work! Finding a reasonable balance between work and private life is what I'm looking for!

When I was young(er) I've always been very active in sports, but due to several reasons that hasn't been the case anymore for the last couple of years ... So to really get me motivated to do something about it, I've just registered for the Brussels Marathon on October 5, 2008. Only three months to prepare : tough, but I've done it before! Up to the runners high!