Yesterday we released our update to the TFS 2012 Power Tools to work with VS/TFS 2012.2 (Update 2).
Yes, I see the irony in announcing this the day after announcing the first “go-live” Update 3 CTP It took us longer than we had hoped to get the Power Tools ready. However, we’ve made a key change to mitigate this issue in the future.
Our Power Tools setup has traditionally had a block to prevent it from working with the next version of VS (which is why the Power Tools from Update 1 wouldn’t work with Update 2). This is a bit of a hold-over from before we started doing the regular update cadence. At that time, it was pretty likely that we’d change something in the 2 years between updates that would break the Power Tools and we’d work hard to have new releases of Power Tools ready before the final release of VS/TFS.
In the new world of frequent updates, it’s much less likely that we break something and trying to synchronize the 2 releases is much harder. So, we’ve removed the block and we fully expect that these Power Tools will continue to work fine with Update 3.
There really aren’t significant changes in the Power Tools release. Aside from removing the block, we fixed a hand full of bugs and removed the back/restore Power Tool – because the feature was moved into the “official product” in Update 2. So, the main reason to install this release is just to get it to work with VS 2012.2.
I apologize for the delay and the inconvenience it caused. I talked to a number of customers who decided to uninstall Update 2 rather than give up their Power Tools. We’re glad to hear that the Power Tools are valued so much, but at the same time, we’re sorry for forcing you to make a choice. You shouldn’t have to any more.
Thanks,
Brian