If you are using basic PowerShell scripts as opposed to DSC with Release Management there are a few gotcha’s I have found. You cannot pass parameters Lets look at a sample script that we would like to run via Release Manager param ( $param1 ) write-verbose -verbose "Start" write-verbose -verbose "Got var1 \[$var1\]" write-verbose -verbose "Got param1 \[$param1\]" write-verbose -verbose "End" In Release Manager we have the following vNext workflow...

With the release of Visual Studio 2015 there are some significant changes to Visual Studio and TFS licensing, you can find the details of Brian Harry’s blog. These changes can make a serious change in what you need to purchase for different roles, so it could well be worth a look.

If you are providing a path to a custom test adaptor such as nUnit or Chutzpah for a TFS/VSO vNext build e.g. $(Build.SourcesDirectory)packages, make sure you have no leading whitespace in the data entry form. If you do have a space you will see an error log like this as the adaptor cannot be found as the command line generated is malformed 2015-07-13T16:11:32.8986514Z Executing the powershell script: C:LRMMSServicesMmsTaskAgentProvisionerToolstasksVSTest1.0.16VSTest.ps1 2015-07-13T16:11:33.0727047Z ##\[debug\]Calling Invoke-VSTest for all test assemblies 2015-07-13T16:11:33....

I have been using Pester for some PowerShell tests. From the command prompt all is good, but I kept getting the error ‘module cannot be loaded because scripts is disabled on this system’ when I tried to run them via the Visual Studio Test Explorer I found the solution on StackOverflow, I had forgotten that Visual Studio is 32bit, so you need to set the 32bit execution policy. Opening the default PowerShell command prompt and and setting the policy only effect the 64Bit instance....

I have been doing some work on vNext Release Management; I managed to waste a good hour today with a stupid error. In vNext process templates you provide a username and password to be used as the Powershell remoting credentials (in the red box below) My Powershell script also took a parameter username, so this was provided as a custom configuration too (the green box). This was the issue. Not unsurprisingly having two parameters with the same name is a problem....

I will be speaking at Leeds DevOps on the 21st of July on the subject of Desired State Configuration (DSC). ‘In the Windows world, due to its API based architecture, deployment is too often not as simple as copying an EXE and updating a text configuration file. Desired State Configuration is an attempt to ease the pain we suffer in this space. Providing a set of tools that can be leveraged by any set of deployment tools whether in a Windows or heterogeneous environment....

Update 21 Aug 2015 - This post contains all the basic information, but there is an improved PowerShell script discussed in Using Release Management vNext templates when you don’t want to use DSC scripts – A better script Many web sites are basically forms over data, so you need to deploy some DB schema and something like a MVC website. Even for this ’bread and butter’ work it is important to have an automated process to avoid human error....

With the help of the Release Management team at Microsoft I now have a working REST based automated TFS Build to Release Management pipeline. Previously we were using a TFS automated build and then manually triggering our agent based Release Management pipeline. When we moved to a vNext PS/DSC based RM pipeline I took the chance to automate the link using REST via a PowerShell script to trigger the initial deployment....

Whilst setting up Application Insights on one of our web sites I hit a problem. The target site appeared to be working OK, but if I setup a ping test it failed. Digging into the failure, as with much of Application Insights just keep clicking to go deeper, I found the issue was that a CSS file was failing to load. Presumably on this Umbraco site the CSS file is meant to be loaded for the site but none of the styles are actually used, hence the site renders OK....

Today was my day for semi annual Media Center (MCE) problems. As usual they seemed to start with an unexpected power issue, a local power cut, maybe the answer is a UPS for the TV setup? Once the PC was rebooted it had forgotten it had any tuners. If I tried to view live TV or re-setup the TV signal it just hung with a spinning ‘toilet bowl of death’ cursor....