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I have been trying to parameterise the SQL DB connection string used by nLog when it is defined in a web.config file of a web site being deployed via Release Management and WebDeploy i.e. I wanted to select and edit the bit highlighted of my web.config file <configuration> <nlog xmlns="[http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd"](http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd") xmlns:xsi="[http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"](http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance")\> <targets async="true"> <target xsi:type="Database" name="SQL" dbProvider="System.Data.SqlClient" connectionString="Data Source=myserver;Database=mydb;Persist Security Info=True;Pooling=False" keepConnection="true" commandText="INSERT INTO \[Logs\](ID, TimeStamp, Message, Level, Logger, Details, Application, MachineName, Username) VALUES(newid(), getdate(), @message, @level, @logger, @exception, @application, @machineName, @username)"> <parameter layout="${message}" name="@message"></parameter> ……. The problem I had was that the xpath query I was using was not returning the nLog node because the nLog node has a namespace defined. This means we can’t just use a query in the form ...

TFS vNext builds do not have a concept of build quality unlike the old XAML based builds. This is an issue for us as we used the changing of the build quality as signal to test a build, or to mark it as released to a client (this was all managed with my TFS Alerts DSL to make sure suitable emails and build retention were used). So how to get around this problem with vNext? ...

I like web deploy as a means to package up websites for deployment. I like the way I only need to add /p:DeployOnBuild=True;PublishProfile=Release as an MSBuild argument to get the package produced as part of an automated build. This opening up loads of deployment options I recently hit an issue packaging up a solution that contained an Azure WebSite and an Azure Web Job (to be hosted in the web site). It is easy to add the web job so that it is included in the Web Deploy package. Once this was done we could deploy from Visual Studio, or package to the local file system and see the web job EXE in the app_datajobs folder as expected. ...

A couple of months ago I wrote a post on using PowerShell scripts to deploy web sites in Release Management vNext templates as opposed to DSC. In that post I provided a script to help with the translation of Release Management configuration variables to entries in the [MSDELPOY].setparameters.xml file for web sites. The code I provided in that post required you to hard code the variables to translate. This quickly become a problem for maintenance. However, there is a simple solution. ...

I have just had a guest post published on the Microsoft UK developers site nUnit and Jasmine.JS unit tests in TFS/VSO vNext build

DDDNorth is on again this year, back in it’s more northern base of the Sunderland University on the 24th of October You can submit your session proposal in here

Background We upgraded our production TFS 2013.4 server to TFS 2015 RTM this week. As opposed to an in-place upgrade we chose to make a few change on the way; so whilst leaving our DBs on our SQL 2012 cluster We moved to a new VM for our AT (to upgrade from Windows 2008R2 to 2012R2) Split the SSRS instance off the AT to a separate VM with a new SSAS server (again to move to 2012R2 and to ease management, getting all the reporting bits in one place) But we do not touch ...

In my last post I discussed how you could wire TCM tests into a Release Management vNext pipeline. The problem with the script I provided, as I noted, was that the deployment was triggered synchronously by the build i.e. the build/release process was: TFS Build Gets the source Compiled the code Run the unit tests Trigger the RM pipeline Wait while the RM pipeline completed RM then Deploys the code Runs the integration tests When RM completed the TFS build completes This process raised a couple of problems ...

Also see Part 2 on how to address gotcha’s in this process When using Release Management there is a good chance you will want to run test suites as part of your automated deployment pipeline. If you are using a vNext PowerShell based pipeline you need a way to trigger the tests via PowerShell as there is no out the box agent to do the job. Step 1 - Install a Test Agent The first step is to make sure that the Visual Studio Test Agent is installed on the box you wish to run the test on. if you don’t already have a MTM Environment in place with a test agent then this can be done by creating a standard environment in Microsoft Test Manager. Remember you only need this environment to include the VM you want to run the test on, unless you want to also gather logs and events from our machines in the system. The complexity is up to you. ...