Microsoft Connect() event on the 12 and 13 November
Microsoft are running a free web-based event Connect() on the 12th and 13th of November. Should be well worth a watch to see the planned direction of developer tooling.
Cannot see a TFS drops location from inside a network isolated environment for Release Management
I have posted before about using Release Management with Lab Management network isolation. They key is that you must issue a NET USE command at the start of the pipeline to allow the VMs in the isolated environment the ability to see the TFS drops location. I hit a problem today that a build failed even though I had issued the NET USE. I got the error Package location ‘\storedropsSabs.Main.CISabs.Main.CI_2.5.178.19130\’ does not exist or Deployer user does not have access. ...
Ordering rows that use the format 1.2.3 in a SQL query
Whilst working on a SSRS based report I had hit a sort order problem. Entries in a main report tablix needed to be sorted by their OrderNumber but this was in the form 1.2.3; so a neither a numeric or alpha sort gave the correct order i.e. a numeric sort fails as 1.2.3 is not a number and an alpha sort worked but give the incorrect order 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.3.10, 1.3.11, 1.3.12, 1.3.2. ...
VSO now available in a European Azure Data Center
I don’t normal do posts that are just re-posts of TFS announcements, it is much better to get the information first hand from the original post, but this one is significant for us in Europe… Up to now there has been a barrier to adoption of VSO that the underlying data will be hosted in the USA. Now there are all the usual Azure Microsoft guarantees about data security, but this has not been enough for some clients for legal, regulatory or their own reasons. This has made VSO a non-starter for many European’s where it at first appears a great match. ...
Having fun with my HDMIPI
The HDMIPI screen I supported on KickStarter arrived this week. After a bit of a false start with a driver board that failed after a couple of minutes it is now all up and running. The replacement board arrived in 48Hours – great support service Now to get down to some projects – that toy robot does look like it needs automating via an IR transmitter and my PiFace
Visual Studio crashes when trying to add an item to a TFS build workflow
There has for a long time been an issue that when you try to add a new activity to the toolbox when editing a TFS build workflow Visual Studio can crash. I have seen it many times and never got to the bottom of it. It seems to be machine specific, as one machine can work while another supposedly identical will fail, but I could never track down the issue. Today I was on a machine that was failing, but … ...
Getting Release Management to fail a release when using a custom PowerShell component
If you have a custom PowerShell script you wish to run you can create a tool in release Management (Inventory > Tools) for the script which deploys the .PS1, PSM files etc. and defines the command line to run it. The problem we hit was that our script failed, but did not fail the build step as the PowerShell.EXE running the script exited without error. The script had thrown an exception which was in the output log file, but it was marked as a completed step. ...
ALM Ranger’s release DevOps Guidance for PowerShell DSC – perfectly timed for DDDNorth
In a beautiful synchronicity the ALM Rangers DevOps guidance for PowerShell DSC has been release at at the same time as I am doing my DDDNorth session ‘What is Desired State Configuration and how does it help me?’ This Rangers project has been really interesting to work on, and provide much of the core of my session for DDDNorth. Well worth a look if you want to create your own DSC resources. ...
"The handshake failed due to an unexpected packet format" with Release Management
Whilst configuring a Release Management 2013.3 system I came across a confusing error. All seemed OK, the server, client and deployment agents were all installed and seemed to be working, but when I tried to select a build to deploy from both the Team Projects and Build drop downs were empty. A check of the Windows event log on the server showed the errors The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send The handshake failed due to an unexpected packet format ...
Cannot build a SSRS project in TFS build due to expired license
If you want to get your TFS build process to product SSRS RDL files you need to call the vsDevEnv custom activity to run Visual Studio (just like for SSIS packages). On our new TFS2013.3 based build agents this step started to fail, turns out the issue was not incorrect versions of DLLs or a some badly applied update, but that the license for Visual Studio on the build agent had expire. ...