I checked out Visual Studio 2019 Preview today to try to get a feel for what’s coming in the next big update to Visual Studio

After my previous experience of trying VS Code, part of me dreamed VS 2019 would feel a bit more like VS Code with more command line visibility, things like zen mode, and first class support for open source extensions.

However, the reality is that serious development and backwards compatibility still require that Visual Studio 2019 stay mostly the same. Despite being more modular, Visual Studio is still an enormous application. Enabling .net development still costs me over 7GB of hard disk space.

I like the 3D dot plot, and I hope they keep this for the final release. I feel that the infinity purple x symbol with it’s sharp, angular, modern look is lacking a sort of coziness and lightness or humanness which in general I feel is missing from much of modern technology today.

The dot plot reminds me of the covers of old programming books from 20 years ago, so I think this image is a good one for balancing the new with the past.

The new start screen offers a quick way to Clone or Check out code from a remote repository. This is great, though in order to clone my github repo I still had to go to github first to git the url, and paste it in to the url field in Visual Studio.

It would be a lot nicer if a github connection could be built directly into this start screen, so I could select my github repositories directly and natively from Visual Studio. This is definitely a step in the right direction though, and much easier than having to download the github plugin before anything github related will work.

The most useful feature I have seen so far is the “Search Visual Studio” search feature. This search does not search the code (it may be better if it did), but searches all Visual Studio commands and settings.

I can’t tell you how many times I have struggled to find the Source Control Explorer quickly (until I finally memorized the shortcut alt+v,e,s)

With this new search I can find any setting or window immediately. If anyone can find the shortcut for typing in this search, that would really supercharge this feature.

These are the biggest things I have found so far in thew new version. I will continue to monitor and experiment with the new features as we move forward..

If a user is removed from the Team Foundation Server or TFVC online, and then another user needs to access a shelveset created by the removed user, finding this shelveset can be difficult.

Using the Find Shelvesets tool in Team Explorer requires you to enter the complete and full name of the shelveset or the complete and full name of the shelveset owner.

If the owner is no longer a member of the Team, or have been deleted from the Azure DevOps organization, curiously, the Find Shelvesets does not show the shelvesets associated with the deleted user..even though they certainly still exist within source control.

This is where the command line comes to the rescue..executing the following command will list the shelveset name for all owners for the project.. note the use of the asteriks(*) to specify all owners..

tf vc shelvesets /owner:*

This will return a list of ALL shelvesets, including shelvesets for the removed user. Once you have the shelveset name, you should be able to type the full name into the “Find Shelvesets” window in the Team Explorer, and find the shelveset that does not have a valid owner.

This whole thing seems like a bug which may get fixed at some point. I am using Visual Studio 2017 (15.9.4)

UPDATE: I discovered that you can use the ‘*’ in the shelveset search to find a list of all shelvesets…