Posts

Background I am finding myself writing a lot of PowerShell at present, mostly for VSTS build extensions. Here I hit a problem (or is it an opportunity for choice?) as to what development environment to use? PowerShell ISE is the ‘best’ experience for debugging a script, but has no source control integration – and it is on all PCs Visual Studio Code has good Git support, but you need to jump through some hoops to get debugging working. Visual Studio PowerShell tools, are just too heavy weight, it is not even in the frame for me for this job. So I have found myself getting the basic scripts working in the PowerShell ISE then moving to VS Code to package up the task/extensions as this means writing .JSON too – so awkward ...

This is a copy of the guest post done on the Microsoft UK web site published on the 7th June 2016 This is a revised version of a post originally published in August 2014. In this revision I have updated version numbers and links for tools used and added a discussion of adapting the process to support VSTS. The code for this post can be found in my GitHub Repo In the past I’ve written on the theory behind migrating TFVC to Git with history. I’ve since used this process for real, as opposed to as a proof of concept, and this post documents my experiences. The requirement was to move an on-premises TFS 2013.2 Scrum Team Project using TFVC to another on premises TFS 2013.2 Scrum Team Project, but this time using Git. ...

Microsoft asked my to revise my August 2014 article on ‘Migrating a TFS TFVC team project to a Git team project’, this revised version is now live on their web site. The changes in the revision are updated links for tools, and information on how to use the technique with VSTS now some work item customisation is available.

Background Most projects will have a range of tests Unit tests (maybe using a mocking framework) running inside the build process Integration/UX and load tests run as part of a release pipeline and finally manual tests In a recent project we were using WebTests to provide some integration tests (in addition to integration tests written using unit testing frameworks) as a means to test a REST/ODATA API, injecting data via the API, pausing while a backend Azure WebJob processed the injected data, then checking a second API to make sure the processed data was correctly presented. Basically mimicking user operations. ...

Struggling to manage those DevTest VM in Azure? Finding it hard to standardise your VMs and get the right things installed? Burning through your Azure credit too fast because you forgot to switch things off? Well Azure DevTest Labs has just been released for general availability, might will just be the thing to help, have a look.

I was lucky enough to attended and be on a panel at yesterdays WinOps London conference, it was a different and very interesting view on DevOps for me. I spend most of my time consulting with test and development teams, with these teams it is very rare to come across a team not using source control and they commonly have some form of automated build too. This means any DevOps discussion usually come from the side of ‘how can I extend my build into deployment…’. ...

If you wish to migrate work items from TFS to VSTS your options are limited. You can of course just pull over work items, without history, using Excel. If you have no work item customisation them OpsHub is an option, but if you have work item customisation then you are going to have to use TFS Integration Platform. And we all know what a lovely experience that is! Note: TFS Integration Platform will cease to be supported by Microsoft at the end of May 2016, this does not mean the tool is going away, just that there will be no support via forums. ...

I am pleased to announce that I have just made public on the VSTS marketplace a new version of my VSTS Generate Release Notes extension. This new version now supports both VSTS/TFS vNext Builds and vNext Releases. The previous versions only supported the generation of release notes as part of a build. The adding of support for release has meant I have had to rethink the internals of how the templates is process as well as the way templates are passed into the task and where results are stored ...

Updated: 5th Aug 2016 added notes in PublisherID I have been developing a few VSTS/TFS build related extensions and have published a few in the VSTS marketplace. This has all been a somewhat manual process, a mixture of Gulp and PowerShell has helped a bit, but I decided it was time to try to do a more formal approach. To do this I have used Jesse Houwing’s VSTS Extension Tasks. Even with this set of tasks I am not sure what I have is ‘best practice’, but it does work. The doubt is due to the way the marketplace handles revisions and preview flags. What I have works for me, but ‘your mileage may differ’ ...

I have just completed the upgrade of our Blog Server to BlogEngine 3.3. This upgrade is a bit more complex than the usual upgrade as between 3.2 to 3.3 there is a change to Razor views for all the widgets. This means you need to remove all the old widgets you have and re-add them using the new razor equivalents. As our blog is backed by SQL, this mean a SQL script to clear down the old widgets, then a manual add of the new versions on each blog we have on our server. One point to note, if using SQL you do need to get BlogEngine 3.3 from its GitHub repo (at the time of writing, I am sure this will change) as after the formal 3.3 release on CodePlex there is a fix for an issue that stopped the editing of widget properties. ...