Whilst doing a vNext build from a TFVC repository I needed map both my production code branch and a common folder of scripts that I intended to use in a number of builds, so my build workspace was set to Map – $/BM/mycode/main - my production code Map – $/BM/BuildDefinations/vNextScripts - my shared PowerShell I wish to run in different builds e.g. assembly versioning. As I wanted this to be a CI build, I also set the trigger to $/tp1/mycode/main ...

I have recently added a CI build to my GitHub stored ParametersXmlAddin VSIX project. I did this using Visual Studio Online’s hosted build service, did you know that this could used to build source from GitHub? As part of this build I wanted to version stamp the assemblies and the resultant VSIX package. To do the former I used the script documented on MSDN, for the latter I also used the same basic method of extracting the version from the build number as used in the script for versioning assemblies. You can find my VSIX script stored in this repo. ...

When access VSO you have two authentication options; either a LiveID (or an MSA using it’s newest name) or a Work Account ID (a domain account). The latter is used to provide extra security, so a domain admin can easily control who has access to a whole set of systems. It does assume you have used Azure Active Directory (AAD) that is sync’d with your on premises AD, and that this AAD is used to back your VSO instance. See my previous post on this subject. ...

At my session at DDDNorth I mentioned that some of the settings you needed to configure in SonarQube 5.1, such as DB connection strings for SonarRunner, would not need to be made once 5.2 was release. Well it was released today. Most important changes for we are Server handles all DB connections LDAP support for user authentication Should make the install process easier

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at DDDNorth on SonarQube, hope you found it useful. The links to resources for my session are SonarQube documentation Microsoft Product Team posts on Technical Debt ALM Rangers Guide on SonarQube (source) ALM Rangers Guide on SonarQube (explanatory post) SonarLint And you can find my slides on my GitHub repo https://github.com/rfennell/Presentations

In case you had not noticed, our MD and Connected Systems MVP Robert Hogg posted about the new Patterns & Practices Architecture Track he is hosting on Day 1 of the Microsoft Future Decoded event next month in London. This track is an additional track to the now full Future Decoded. If you are interested in attending then get in touch with enquiries@blackmarble.com, for the attention of Linda, and she can help you out with a special code (if there are still any left). This code will not only give you access to the excellent p&p track on Day One, but also the Keynotes, so please select Day One when you register! ...

Whilst working with a vNext Release Management pipeline I started seeing the error Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Common.Helpers.OperationFailedException: New deployment is not allowed as an another deployment is in progress. Retry the deployment after sometime. Problem was I could not see any blocked or paused deployment releases. All Internet searches mentioned multiple pipelines that share components, but this was not the issue. Eventually I found the issue, my release pipeline included a step that ran CodedUI tests via TCM, hence a previous running of this template had triggered the test via TCM, but they had stalled. I found this by looking in MTM. ...

The agenda for our 8th annual Black Marble Architecture Forum is firming up. Just confirmed is our keynote from Martin Woodward the Executive Director of the .NET Foundation, discussing open source adoption within Microsoft There are still spaces for this free event, so why not register? The event is on the 15th of December in Leeds.

This article was first published on the Microsoft’s UK Developers site as Running nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build With the advent of vNext build in TFS 2015 and Visual Studio Online running unit tests that are not MSTest based within your build process is far more straightforward than it used to be. No longer do you have to use custom XAML build activities or tell all your TFS build controllers where the test runner assemblies are. The ‘out the box’ vNext build Visual Studio Test task will automatically load any test adaptors it finds in the path specified for test runners in its advanced properties, a path that can be populated via NuGet. ...

When doing TFS upgrades it is useful to know roughly how long they will take. The upgrade programs give a number of steps, but not all steps are equal. Some are quick, some are slow. I have found it useful to graph past updates so I can get a feel of how long an update will take given it got to ‘step x in y minutes’. You can do this by hand, noting down time as specific steps are reached. However for a long upgrade it usually means pulling data out of the TFS TPC upgrade logs. ...