Cool new feature with VS2010 and TFS 2010

I recently installed TFS 2010 RC x64 and only now got round to playing with it. I have to say once I got over the 'gremlins' during the installation everything else is pretty slick. There are many features I like and many that are going to make our lifes better.

One of the really horible things I hated about VS 2008 and TFS 2008 was after a partially succeeded build, opening up the build output in Build Explorer would only tell you something went wrong. In other words, the build partially suceeded. What? what does this mean? we know from experience this generally means a unit test had failed, but which one, and how do I fix it?



The only way to know which unit test had failed would be to troll through the build log - very painful when you have a large build script spanning multiple projects and 1000's of unit tests. I used to search for "FAIL". But some developers name their unit tests with the word "FAIL" in it so this doesn't help matters as it takes forever to find the real error.


So I created a really simple test project and added a test method that throw an exception, after I checked in under a CI build definition, I got the following:






Now, how cool is that! Weldone Microsoft. I think this will make many developers very happy. Look at the options we get at the top, [Open Drop Folder], [Retain Indefinately] etc it just makes our lifes easier. But the best bit, the reason for posting this blog entry, If I click "View Test Results" I get the following:







I'm impressed, this will make us so much more productive, a reason alone to upgrade. Excellent stuff!