Blogs|Dec 2, 2007

MSBuild Debuggers!

It looks like I’m not the only one who wanted a debugger for MSBuild projects. When the MSBuild team asked everyone to spend $100 to prioritize features, the runaway winner was a debugger. Reading the comments to my original post (as well as the MSBuild team’s posts), Partho Das from Microsoft has released a Visual…
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Blogs|Nov 21, 2007

Easily Converting to Visual Studio 2008

With VS 2008 being released on Monday, let the project conversions begin! While I wish we could have had a single project and solution format that would have worked between VS 2005 and VS 2008, at least we can use VS 2008 to target .NET 2.0 only projects. Faced with converting about 100 different project…
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Blogs|Nov 18, 2007

Optimizing the Silverlight Install Experience

Last night I put the finishing touches on my March 2008 Wicked Code column for MSDN Magazine. Titled “Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices for Developing Silverlight 1.0 Applications,” it offers up an assortment of—surprise!—tips, tricks, and best practices for building better, faster, and more maintainable Silverlight apps. One of the best practices documented in the article…
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Blogs|Nov 16, 2007

Updated Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications Source Code (3.2.11114.1)

After four or five reports that the SettingsMaster Add-In was failing to create it’s toolbar on some systems, I finally gave up and quit relying on what the Visual Studio documentation says about the ext_ConnectMode.ext_cm_UISetup on OnConnection. On some systems it turns out that there is no way in the world that message is sent.…
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Blogs|Nov 11, 2007

MSBuild 3.5 Tips and a Small MSBuild 4.0 Wish List

Earlier this week, I spent some quality time porting a moderately complicated build over to MSBUILD 3.5, the version that comes with Visual Studio 2008. There are numerous new features in MSBUILD 3.5 that are quite interesting, especially the wonderful AdditionalProperties and Properties child elements on ItemGroup elements for MSBuild tasks. Now you can create…
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Blogs|Nov 6, 2007

I’m Official!

Last Thursday morning, I got up bright and early and headed south for the Florida International Jet Rally in Lake Wales, FL. The goal was to get more stick time on my jet and to earn my turbine waiver—that magic piece of paper that allows you to fly model turbine aircraft safely and legally. I…
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Blogs|Oct 28, 2007

itoldyouso – An Undocumented WinDBG Extension Command

Aaron Lerch recently wrote about a funny name for an exported function he saw exported from DBGHELP.DLL, itoldyouso. Aaron showed a small section of the Dependency Walker output, which piqued my curiosity. Below is a larger screen shot. Does anything strike you interesting in the exported functions? DBGHELP.DLL has a few documented WinDBG extension commands…
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Blogs|Oct 25, 2007

Silverlight Streaming in Action

One of the least talked about (and least understood) facets of Silverlight is Silverlight Streaming (SLS). Silverlight Streaming is a service provided by Windows Live for hosting and streaming Silverlight applications and content. The name implies that it’s all about streaming, but the name is misleading. SLS is good—very good, in fact—at streaming audio and…
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Blogs|Oct 21, 2007

WiX: A Better TALLOW – PARAFFIN (Part 3 of 3)

In the first installment of this series I discussed an introduction to WiX. In the second installment, I talked about the issues related to creating .WXS files with TALLOW.EXE and how you have to manually maintain those files by hand, which can be tedious to the extreme. In this final installment, I will present a…
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Blogs|Oct 19, 2007

WiX: The Pain of WiX (Part 2 of 3)

In the first part of this series I gave an introduction to WiX. In this second installment of this three part series, I am assuming that you’ve read through the Windows Installer documentation and through Gábor Deák Jahn’s WiX Tutorial. Additionally, I’m assuming that you’ve written a simple installation using WiX so you’ve read about…
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Blogs|Oct 18, 2007

WiX: Hints for New Users (Part 1 of 3)

If you remember some of the early pronouncements about .NET you probably heard the one where using .NET meant you could just XCOPY your binaries to the server and run them. No wrestling with the difficult Windows Installer technology or strange third party tool to create an installation, just the pure nirvana of copy and…
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Blogs|Oct 7, 2007

Complete Virtual Machine Backups with Mere Minutes of Downtime

Last week, I completely virtualized my life. Well, at least my server life is all virtualized. I’d been running my Team Foundation Server in a virtual machine, but took the plunge to get my domain controller virtualized as well. One of the things I’d been planning to do was revisit my server backup strategy, especially…
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