Posts

One of my favourite new features in VS11 is that the unit testing is pluggable. You don’t have to use MSTest, you can use any test framework that an adaptor is available for (at the release of the beta this meant the list of framworks on Peter Provost’s blog, but I am sure this will grow). So what does this mean and how do you use it? Add some tests First it is worth noting that you no longer need to use a test project to contain your MSTest, you can if you want, but you don’t need to. So you can ...

I have just added a page to the blog that lists some of the podcasts I try to listen to, in an attempt to keep up to date.

Ours is a fast moving industry and as times goes on I find the need to specialise more and more. However, I believe there is a great value in at least having a passing knowledge of as much of our field as possible, IT pros can learn from developers and .NET team from Java and of course the other way around. I find the best way to try to keep abreast of new ideas is to listen to podcasts; I personally find it hard read enough blogs, but I can find time to listen to a podcast whist travelling or working around the house. Here is a list of a few I find give me at least a feel for what is going on, I still feel that they are a bit Microsoft focused, so interested to hear any other suggestions ...

Whilst writing documentation for TFS community build extensions (just published the Zip activity documentation) I hit upon a problem working with TFS11. The TFS community build extensions support both TFS2010 and TFS11beta, unfortunately the two versions need to be built separately (once against TFS2010 DLLs and once against TFS11 ones). As of version 1.3 of the extensions both versions are shipped in the download. In the past in the past I have tended to work in TFS2010 on this community project, but since the VS/TFS11 beta release I am trying to move over to the new build. So to write the documentation for the ZIP activity I started in TFS11. I followed the usual method to use a custom activity (there is no improvement over this frankly horrible process in VS11) so within VS11 I added the ZIP activity to a copy of the defaultprocesstemplate.xaml. All appeared OK but when I ran a build with this new template. I got the error ...

I posted yesterday on using Typemock and Microsoft Fakes with SharePoint. After a bit more thought I realised the key thing in using Typemock I found easier was the construction of my SPListItem dataset. Typemock allowed me to fake SPListItems and put them in a generic List then just make this the return value for the Item collection using the magic .WillReturnCollectionValuesOf() method that converts my List to the required collection type. With the Microsoft Fakes I had think about a delegate that constructed my test data at runtime. This is not a problem, just a different way of working. ...

Updated 5 May 2012 Also see my follow up post, this corrects some of the information of faking SharePoint I have done posts in the past about how you can use Typemock Isolator to fake out SharePoint to speed design and testing. The reason you need special tooling, beyond standard mocking frameworks like Rhino or MOQ, is that SharePoint has many sealed private classes with no public constructors. So in the past you only had two options: Typemock Isolator and Moles from Microsoft research. ...

Whilst travelling I had neglected to post about the new release of Typemock Isolator Version 7. This new release extends the range of the product to provide a variety of ‘test support tools’ that help you track down bugs sooner. However, the best new feature for me is that it allows support of historic versions of Isolator, this means you don’t have to upgrade all projects to V7 at the same time. The V7 engine will use the older assemblies e.g. V6 perfectly happily. Make managing build boxes far easier ...

One of the nice new feature of TFS11 is that you get a third option for what to do with your build output Don’t copy output anywhere – good for CI builds that nobody will ever consume, just used to run tests Drop to a UNC share e.g. \server1drops – the default and used 9 times out 10 The new one - drop to source control e.g. $/myproject/drops. The advantage of this new third option is your build agents can place the files they create in a location that can be accessed by any TFS client i.e. in the source control repository. A user no longer needs to be on a VPN or corporate LAN to be able to see a UNC share. ...

It was announced overnight that TEE is now free. What does this mean? It means if you do not have to buy TEE as some extra software if you already have a TFS CAL. This removed a barrier to adoption for developers who work in heterogeneous systems, there is no extra cost to integrate Eclipse as well a Visual Studio with TFS . If you want to find out more about TEE why not come Black Marble’s free webinar I am delivering on the 19th? ...

I recently did a guest post for the VSTS UK Team Blog on Team Explorer Everywhere. On the 19th of March I will be doing a free webinar on the same subject. To register for this event please see the Black Marble web site.