Posts

I posted a while ago on using my Typemock TMockRunner Custom Activity for Team Build 2010. I left that post with the problem that if you wished to customise a template after you a had added the custom activity you had to use the somewhat complex branching model edit the XAML. If you just followed the process in my post to put the build template in a new team project and tried to edit the XAML you got the following errors, an import namespace error and the associated inability to render part of the workflow...

The last of the recent batch of announcements is that of the first official release of the TFS Integration Platform. This provides tools to allow synchronisation between TFS 2010 and ….. TFS 2008 TFS 2010 ClearCase ClearQuest File System Again more details on Brian Harry’s blog.

Another recent announcement from Brian Harry’s blog was about the release of the Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 MOSS Configuration Tool. I had a look at this tool during it’s beta testing and it certainly can help to get all the setting right to allow Excel Services to provide your charting for TFS projects, it worked for us.

In the VSLive! keynote Microsoft made announcements about Lab Management, it will be RTM’d later this month and best of all it will be included as part of the benefits of the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN and Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 with MSDN SKUs. You can read more detail on Brian Keller’s blog I think this is a great move on licensing, we had expect it to be purchasable addition to Visual Studio....

[Also see Running MSDeploy to a remote box from inside a TFS 2010 Build (Part 2)] A fellow MVP Ewald Hofman wrote a great post on getting an Web Application to deploy as part of a TFS 2010 build. I have been using this technique but found a few points that were not right in the original post, I assume these are down to RC/RTM issues and the fact I was trying to access a remote system....

Now I know this should be simple and obvious but I had a few problems today publishing a web service to a new IIS7 host. These are the steps I had to follow to get around all my errors: Take a patched Windows Server 2008 R2, this had the File Server and IIS roles installed. I install MSDeploy (http://blog.iis.net/msdeploy) onto the server to manage my deployment, this is a tool I am becoming a big fan of lately....

If you have VS2010 Premium or Ultimate [Professional corrected error in orginal post] you have code coverage built into the test system. When you look at your test results there is a button to see the code coverage You would think that there is easy way to use the code coverage in your automated build process using Team Build 2010, well it can done but you have to do a bit of work....

It is Agile Yorkshire time again, it is a real shame that due to the move of the meeting from the 2nd Wednesday to the 2nd Tuesday I really struggle to make the events. Particularly irritating this month as this one look really interesting and the speaker, Ralph Williams, from past evidence always is entertaining. To quote the Agile Yorkshire site the session will.. “The presentation will focus on the techniques that testers use to identify their tests, whether working from a requirements specification or on agile teams....

One of our clients has been working on a nice scale out implementation of TFS2010 (migrating from an existing TFS2005). They are using AT load balancing, failover SQL cluster and Search Server Express to unify search. As you might expect this has been a interesting learning experience for all. You can find out about some of the problems they have had and their solutions are http://www.rancidswan.com/?cat=19

I have been meaning to watch back the video taken of my recent presentation for a while. This weekend I have had the chance to sample the highlights! In the past I have always found it hard to watch myself on recordings, though after the initial cringe this time it was not too bad. I must be getting used to the critical process. So what have I learnt I say ‘err’ to ‘err’ much ‘err’ I move my hands about much like Magnus Pike, a childhood 1970/80s TV popular science reference as seen in this Thomas Dolby video and this Mitchell and Web sketch, for those not old enough to remember....