1) VS Team Foundation Install

Here's the first of what I hope to be many posts on Visual Studio 2005 Team System / Team Foundation Server. 

My scenario is my "Betabox," that is a pretty beefy box that runs Virtual Server, with a 2003 VM running Yukon/TFS and an XPSP2 VM running VS2k5 Team Suite.

First impressions so far? I love the installer for SQL2005, but the TFS installer needs more work.  It told me I didn't have sharepoint services installed, but never told me where I needed to get them from / if I had to pay, etc. So here's a tip / link for anyone in the same boat:

On this page, you'll find a download link for the necessary Sharepoint services: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/sharepoint/wss.mspx

On that same page, there's a quote that says it's a free license if you have a license for Windows Server 2003: (Thank you NY .NET Developer UG!)
"Licensing.Windows SharePoint Services is provided as part of the Windows Server 2003 operating system and Windows licensing terms apply to its use. There is no additional charge for Windows SharePoint Services."

Wierdness #2: Installing SQL2005 installs Visual Studio... this surprised me quite a bit... It looks like they did this so you could create report projects, analysis projects, etc.

My last comment for now is that after installing TFS, there's nothing.  It doesn't install anything in start. It doesn't give you any hints on where to go to further set it up / use it. This really surprised me. It's set up a bunch of virtual directories, but I haven't tried connecting to it from my XP client VM yet. So far there has been no install issues that I couldn't resolve.

Actually the toughest part so far has been connecting the 2003 Virtual Machine to the outside internet, followed by the long list (42 updates!) of Windows Update installs. (Visual Studio 2005 requires Windows Installer 3.1 to be on the machine before the install will start.)