TFS how to: create a feature branch from your working copy

Make your changes at your local environment.
Don’t do a normal check in, instead do the following:

1. Go to Source Control Explorer
2. Right click on the source control folder on which you want to create the feature branch.
3. Select Branching and Merging > Branch
   
4. Name your branch.
   Select Version Type: Workspace Version (which is your local source version) and the appropriate workspace which should be selected automatically.
   
5. Now the changes are committed to the branch instead of to the main line.

If you want to continue to work on the branched version you have to open the branched solution file.

Force VS2010 to garbage collect

Try Ctrl-Alt-Shift-F12, twice

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/camerons/archive/2010/12/15/force-vs-to-garbage-collect.aspx

Be more fluent in your test asserts.

How readable are your tests really.
Does it help to use one of these fluent assert extensions?

• http://vstestingextensions.codeplex.com/
• http://code.google.com/p/fluent-assert/
• http://fluentassertions.codeplex.com/

TFS2010 How to enable new features for upgraded projects

Allan Clark has written an interesting blog posts which summarize all the things you have to do, to upgrade your migrated TFS projects to be able to use the new feature set.

You’ll find the blog post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/allclark/archive/2010/12/08/enababling-new-application-lifecycle-management-features-for-visual-studio-2010-in-upgraded-team-projects.aspx

New SpecFlow Version 1.5

If you won’t wait until the new version is linked at www.specflow.org you‘ll find it at https://github.com/techtalk/SpecFlow

Breaking changes:
+ Changing the default value (true) of the allowRowTests configuration setting is not incompatible with older
  runtimes.

New features:
+ Step Intellisense for Visual Studio 2010 - displays the list of bound steps when pressing space or ctrl+space
  after a step keyword
  (Thanks to Marcus Hammarberg for the contribution.)

+ Options for Visual Studio 2010 - you can enable/disable the integration features (syntax coloring, outlining, intellisense) in Visual Studio 2010, Tools / Options / SpecFlow / General

+ Faster installation for VS2010 - if you install SpecFlow only to VS2010, the installation is much faster as we now entirely using the new VSIX infrastructure for the integration.

+ Support for row test generation (NUnit, MbUnit and xUnit). This new feature is enabled by default, but can be switched off from the configuration with <generator allowRowTests="false" />.
  (Thanks to John Gietzen (otac0n) for the contribution.)

+ Support for specifying property names with blanks and case insensitive for SpecFlow.Assist (by Steven Zhang, jdomzhang)

Fixed issues:
+ Scoped Steps does not recognize feature tags (Issue 12)
+ Support for double and nullable types in table-helpers of SpecFlow.Assist
+ Support for enum parsing in table-helpers of SpecFlow.Assist
+ Adding comparison helpers to SpecFlow.Assist (by darrencauthon)
+ Support for char parsing in table-helpers of SpecFlow.Assist (Issue 19)
+ VS2010 might crash after pasting into a feature file
+ Excution report should list features ordered by feature title

TFS2010 Build - Team Foundation Build Activities

Reference documentation is online.
You’ll find it her: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg265783.aspx

TFS 2008 Build–skip workitem creation on failed build

If you don’t want teambuild to create a workitem on a failed build you have to add the following line to your build project in file to property group:

<SkipWorkItemCreation>true</SkipWorkItemCreation>