Every time I add the Typemock Isolator custom activity to a TFS 2010 build I learn something new that eases the process. In the past I have posted on the basic process to get the activity into your build, and I would also draw your attention to the ALM rangers guide to build customisation, which provides loads of useful information on this front. Today, when I added the activity to a build I made the following improvements to the settings to make life a bit easier. This build is one used wildcard scanning for assemblies containing test with a test configuration file (this is the red usage in the documentation, it will make sense if you read the documentation) ...

I have been having a on-going project to run multiple build controllers on a single VM. Today I needed to reconfigure a on of the controllers to point at a different TPC. You have to do this the correct way to avoid problems. My error log was full of _Http communication failure: _Exception Message: Cannot listen on pipe name ’net.pipe://build/ServiceHost/1’ because another pipe endpoint is already listening on that name. (type AddressAlreadyInUseException) ...

When I plugged my WP7 LG-E900 today it told me there was a update. When I tried to install this it failed, twice. So I changed USB cable and plugged it directly into a port on my laptop, not my usually phone syncing cable plugged into my laptops docking station, and it worked. So not sure if it a USB cable quality issue, or a USB port issue, just something to remember. ...

When I plugged my WP7 LG-E900 today it told me there was a update. When I tried to install this it failed, twice. So I changed USB cable and plugged it directly into a port on my laptop, not my usually phone syncing cable plugged into my laptops docking station, and it worked. So not sure if it a USB cable quality issue, or a USB port issue, just something to remember. ...

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at NxtGen in Southampton last night, and congratulation to the people who won Typemock Isolator licenses kindly provided by Typemock. The session was meant to be based on TDD and Mocking, quite a big subject for 90 minutes. I of course had to gloss over some areas that are interesting around the edges of this subject. As I mentioned there are videoes of related sessions on this blog; also here are links on other subjects I touched on… ...

I presented last night at the West Yorkshire BCS and received a number of comments that it was great to see free training being available. This for me is one of the most important areas of our community, and an area we are very lucky with. There are plenty of opportunities to access knowledge….. Of late we have seen that the big vendor conferences (such as Microsoft’s TechEd, PDC and MIX) and the platform independent developer conferences (such as NDC) streaming their sessions live for free and also have their sessions available for free download within a few days. Microsoft’ Channel 9 is also an excellent resource of conference sessions and specially made material on a vast range of subjects from language design to scheduling of the buses on Microsoft campus. Or if you prefer to listen to something whist your drive why not try the .Net Rocks podcast. There are plenty more specialist resources out there on the web. ...

[Updated 1 mar 2012 - This should only effect you if Eclipse is unzipped into your ‘c:program files’ folder structure) During my new laptop build I have had to reinstall Eclipse, so I took the chance to upgrade to the Indigo release. When I tried to install the TFS 2010 Team Explorer Everywhere SP1 plug-in I got the error Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found. Software currently installed: Shared profile 1.0.0.1308118925849 (SharedProfile_epp.package.java 1.0.0.1308118925849) Missing requirement: Shared profile 1.0.0.1308118925849 (SharedProfile_epp.package.java 1.0.0.1308118925849) requires ‘org.maven.ide.eclipse [1.0.0.20110607-2117]’ but it could not be found ...

I have had my Lenovo W520 a week now and must say I am very happy with it. I am still hitting the wrong keys a good deal of the time, the only problem being the Fn and Ctrl keys are reversed in position from my old Acer, it is a good job Fn-V and Fn-C does nothing dangerous!. The keyboard is very nice to type on, a far more solid feel than any previous laptop I have had. ...

I have just replaced my old Acer laptop with a rather nice Lenovo W520. This has plenty of memory and is able to run Hyper-V. In the past for TFS demos I had used boot from VHD to boot the Acer into Windows 2K8, as the Acer could not run Hyper-V due to lack of hardware virtualisation support in the bios. So I had a fully configured VHD boot what I wanted to move to Hyper-V. ...

Next week I am speaking at: The West Yorkshire BCS on “Application Lifecycle Management - supporting the software development process from inception to retirement” , Wednesday 20 July 2011, 6.30pm (refreshments available from 5.45pm) at NTI Leeds, Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9EN. and NxtGen Southampton on “TDD & Mocking, a love affair”, Thursday, July 21, 2011 , 7pm, St Andrew’s Hall, Avenue St Andrew’s URC, SOUTHAMPTON, SO17 1XQ ...