A new 1.3.0.0 release of the Community TFS Build Extensions has been published today. This contains some fixes and two new activities SPDisposeChecker – checks for SharePoint best practice CatNetScan – checks for common security issues

For many years Black Marble has run free events on a wide range of technologies. Originally we only ran these locally in Yorkshire, but as time progressed we have run them across the UK and Eire. They are a great way to help your staff whether technical or managerial get up to speed with new developments in our industry. For 2012 we have decided to try running some events online. The format for these events will be a short 30 minute interactive sessions where you will have the chance to see a short presentation and/or demonstration on a technology followed by a Q&A session with the presenter....

A common cause of the TF266026 error is because when the build agent tries to start (it is the build agent that runs the workflows in Lab Management) it cannot access the custom assemblies folder as defined for its parent build controller. Obviously this problem only occurs if you have set a custom assemblies path for parent build controller. The reason for the error is because the agent is running as the Lab Management service account, in my case tfs2010lab, as defined for the TPC in the TFS Administration Console....

Whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 build today to the new 1.2 release of the Community TFS Build Extensions we hit an issue. All seemed to go OK until the build tried to use the StyleCop activity, which failed with the error Showing a modal dialog box or form when the application is not running in UserInteractive mode is not a valid operation. Specify the ServiceNotification or DefaultDesktopOnly style to display a notification from a service application....

It can be a bit confusing to get work out which tools to use at which stages required to get a lab environment up and running in TFS. Here is a basic workflow showing what you need to do in System Center Virtual Machine Manager prior to starting in MTM Lab Center Note: if you want to copy environments between TFS Team project Collections have a look at this post

I got a TF260073, incompatible architecture error when trying to deploy a new virtual lab environment using a newly created VM and template. I found the fix in a forum post. The issue was that when I had build the VMs, I had installed the Lab Management agents using a VMprep DVD ISO and mounted it using ‘share image instead of copying it’ option. This as the name implies means the ISO is mount from a share not copied to the server running the VM, this save time and disk resources....

When using TEE in Eclipse 3.7 on Ubuntu 11.10 there is a problem trying to view a TFS build report. If you click on the report in the Build Explorer you would expect a new tab to open and the report be shown. This is what you see in Eclipse on Windows and on older versions of Eclipse on Linux. However on Ubuntu 11.10 with Eclipse 3.7 you get a File Download dialog....

I swapped to a Nokia Lumia 800 yesterday from my LG E900, all very quick an easy after my experience last month. My first impressions the on/off/volume buttons were better placed for a left hander on the LG, but I expect I will get used to that. the poor reception in my house was not the LGs fault – just a bad reception area the Nokia does seem faster

I recently got round to taking a look at Team Explorer Everywhere 11 CTP1. This is the version of TEE that allows you to access the Azure hosted preview of the next version of TFS using Eclipse as a client. I decided to start with a clean OS so Downloaded the Ubuntu 32bit ISO Used this ISO to create a test VM on my copy of VirtualBox (currently using VirtualBox as this allows me to create 64bit and 32bit guest VMs on my Windows 7 laptop without have to reboot to my dual boot Windows 2008 partition to access Hyper-V) Selected default installation options for Ubuntu When completed used the Ubuntu Software Centre tool to install Eclipse 3....

Agile Yorkshire is kicking off the New Year on the Tuesday Jan 10 at Old Broadcasting House, Leeds where the subject will be Extreme Programming(XP). The session will be based around an Extreme Hour: a hands-on XP project miniature with no coding experience required. Then off to be pub to continue the chat. Unfortunately I cannot make the session, but I am sure it will be interesting, especially if you have not tried an Extreme Hour....