Software Configuration Management / Branching & Merging Guidance

There is more reading material from Microsoft, especially dedicated to branching and merging of codelines and artifacts:

Microsoft Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance

and a book from Stephen P. Berczuk:

Software Configuration Management Patterns

Allow me these posts - even if they are not directly related to .NET development :-)

TFS Guide Final Release

Microsoft's patterns & practices group recently uploaded the final release of the Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Guide to codeplex.

This almost 500 pages 'book' provides a lot of very detailed guidance for development teams starting to use TFS as well as for team optimizing their work with the tools.

The How-To section in the appendix provides step-by-step instructions about:

- Add a New Developer to Your Project in Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
- Automatically Run Code Analysis with Team Build in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Create a Custom Report for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Create a “Risk over Time” Report for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Create Custom Check-in Policies in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Create Your Source Tree in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Customize a Process Template in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Customize a Report in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Manage Projects in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Migrate Source Code to Team Foundation Server from Visual Source Safe
- Perform a Baseless Merge in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Set Up a Continuous Integration Build in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Set Up a Scheduled Build in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Structure ASP.NET Applications in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Structure Windows Applications in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
- Structure Your Source Control Folders in Team Foundation Server

All in all a very recommending piece of reading.

System.IO.Compression in .NET 2.0

I just realized that .NET 2.0 introduced compression/zipping functionality:

using System.IO.Compression;

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
GZipStream compressedzipStream = new GZipStream(ms , CompressionMode.Compress, true);
compressedzipStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
compressedzipStream.Close();