Team Foundation Service and Windows 8

Microsoft has launched a Team Foundation Service (http://tfspreview.com/). It is Team Foundation Server in the cloud. There is source control, continuous builds, test running and agile planning functions. All this functionality in the cloud. Nice! The service is still in preview and during preview the service is FREE! So, go ahead, set up an account and try it out.

I have tried it with Visual Studio 2012 RC and it works really good. There is just one problem. Windows 8 Metro applications is not supported by the continuous build. I got strange errors like “’ValidateAppxManifest failed. Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {…} failed”.

After talking with Microsoft about it, I found out that they are running the service on Windows 2008 R2 servers, which is understandable, and thus Windows 8 apps can not be built. What is not understandable is that they do not have any plans or dates when Windows 8 apps will be supported! To speed things along, I have added a request for Windows 8 support on the Visual Studio user voice site (http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2970091-support-windows-8-apps-in-tfspreview-hosted-build). Please, my reader, go to the site and vote for this. If we get enough votes Microsoft will implement it.

Microsoft’s proposed solution for now, is to set up our own on-premise build machine that connects to the cloud service. This is no big deal, but it would have been really sweet if you could have everything in the could.

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