Background If you are creating VSTS build extensions you will need to get the build or release’s PAT token if you wish to call the VSTS REST API. This is done using a call like this (Node) import tl = require('vsts-task-lib/task'); var auth = tl.getEndpointAuthorization('SYSTEMVSSCONNECTION', false); if (auth.scheme === 'OAuth') { var token = auth.parameters\['AccessToken'\]; or (PowerShell) $vssEndPoint = Get-ServiceEndPoint -Name "SystemVssConnection" -Context $distributedTaskContext $personalAccessToken = $vssEndpoint.Authorization.Parameters.AccessToken You pop the resultant PAT into the headers of your REST web request and you are away and running. ...

Rik Hepworth and myself have been doing our ‘Living the Dream – Real world DevOps with VSTS and ARM’ at a good few events over the past few months. We now, at last, have a recording of a version of it up on Black Marble YouTube Channel’s DevOps Playlist Enjoy….

There are still spaces available at the Black Marble hosted venue for the Global DevOps Bootcamp on the 17th of June If you are interested register here

Do you find your TFS server gets forgotten? It is not owned by the IT department and the Development team don’t have the time to support it fully, it never gets patched or upgrades? Or maybe you are adopting a cloud first strategy for all you systems? Well maybe it is time to consider moving your on-premises TFS instance to VSTS? On the 9th of May at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Leeds I will be presenting at a Black Marble /Microsoft event where we will be looking at Microsoft’s new high fidelity VSTS database import tools that can be used to move a TFS instance to VSTS. ...

Rik and myself had a great time fun last night chatting all things ALM and DevOps with Greg Duncan on RadioTFS show 136. I was amazed it was a year since I was last on. The Podcast is now up at http://radiotfs.com/Show/136 , why not have a listen

My Generate Release Notes VSTS extension has been my most popular by a long way. I have enhanced it, with the help of others via pull requests, but there have been two repeating common questions that have not been resolved Is it cross platform? Why does it show different work items and commit associations to the VSTS Release Status UI? Well the answer to the first is that the core of the logic for the extension came from a PowerShell script we used internally, so PowerShell was the obvious first platform, especially as though my PowerShell skills are not great, my Node was weaker! ...

I have been working on a new Node.JS based VSTS Build Extension, so loads of Node learning going on as it is a language I have not done much with in the past. I expect to get caught out in places, but I have just wasted a good few hours on this one! I am working in VS Code using Typescript to generate my Node based task. Whilst hacking around I have been just running the script in the VS Code debugger, getting the logic right before packaging it up and testing within a VSTS Build extension. ...

It has just been announced by Microsoft that it’s Open Source service CodePlex is shutting down before the end of the year. The reality is that the Microsoft focused Open Source community, and Microsoft itself, have moved to GitHub a good while ago. I think I, like most developers, have moved any active Open Source projects to GitHub a good while ago, but I still had legacy ones on CodePlex. Microsoft have provided a nicely documented process to move the key assets of projects, whether TFVC or Git based, to GitHub. This process worked for me. However, I will suggest a could of changes/additions ...

I m really pleased to say that we at Black Marble are hosting a Yorkshire venue for the upcoming Global DevOps Bootcamp, to quote the main bootcamp site… “Global DevOps Bootcamp is a global event that will be held on Saturday June 17th and is all about DevOps on the Microsoft Stack. Centrally organized by Xpirit and Solidify and offered to you by Black Marble. During this 1-day event we will join (Microsoft) DevOps communities all around the world to talk, learn and play with DevOps concepts. ...

I am speaking “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” a Visual Studio 2017 Launch Event at Microsoft’s offices in Dublin on the 30th of this month. A bit of a departure for me I will be speaking on Xamarin, makes a change To register see the event site