TFS Msscci Provider 2.0

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Just before Holiday Season we released new version of TFS Msscci Provider - https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=FAEB7636-644E-451A-90D4-7947217DA0E7&displaylang=en. Of course the biggest demand was to allow provider to work with the Orcas Object Model. This means, that if you install Orcas in your organization, you can use it with your VS2003/VB6/FoxPro tools as well, you don't need to install Whidbey just for them. If some dev boxes will still have only VS2005 - you may use old Msscci Provider on them - remember that Whidbey and Orcas client and servers are compatible.

So what changed besides Orcas dependency? We added 2 cool features for VS 2003:

  • we batch checkins of pending edits, done in multiple projects (before you were getting checkin dialog for each project)
  • we validate folder you selected during "Open from SCC" to check if it contains project file

We also added support for  eMbedded C++ 4 (you could enable it before, casting a small spell - https://blogs.msdn.com/michalma/archive/2007/02/15/msscci-with-embedded-c-4.aspx).

But my favorite is something else (and probably it's not noticed by nobody ;) While testing Msscci provider, we do "Open from SCC" and "Add to SCC" much more often than any person using provider for real work. This means that we spend much more time in "Pick folder item" dialog. In this version we finally cut number of server calls, needed to navigate the server structure and select path we want. I can tell you one thing - it saved Ben and me a lot of frustration, while working inside vpc against our personal, slow tfs servers. :)