Questa breve nota descrive come integrare un tool quale XmlPreprocess nella build di Team Foundation Server 2010 o 2012. L’esempio in sé ha una sua utilità spicciola — i file di configurazione nello share di Drop vengono predisposti...

A customer made me this request so I scratched my head to solve the issue. Let’s start with a bit of context. Why WSDL? WSDL is the standard for describing a web service, it roots back to end of ‘90s; being a standard, it could be used to exchange contracts...

To my English followers: I will try to translate this post as I find the time to do it. Temo di averlo ripetuto alla nausea: la build incrementale è una faccenda molto delicata ed è facile combinare pasticci se non si controlla costantemente. Perciò ne...

Imagine this scenario: you are working in setting up the Lab Management features of TFS 2010. The main purpose is to execute automated tests. The customer asked to have a lab environment able to test different clients OS, namely Windows XP and Windows...

  The Rangers Build Customization Guide is public on Codeplex and I am happy this is over… for while. Willy and Bijan are very demanding on ALM Rangers and already started on new projects and team. I do not like repeating, so get the details from...

  The other day a question came from a colleague, that sounded like this. My client has been using TFS for many years now and has a production deployment consisting of about 4 TFS 2008 servers containing about 50, 50, 25 & 25 team projects respectively...

  A very welcome news, today. The BizTalk team released to public an hotfix to let BizTalk projects (.btproj) to compile successfully under TeamBuild 2010 ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2406405 ). I discovered the issues myself and worked with...

Yesterday, I published Sprinkler on CodePlex and today I completed my efforts with another tool: SettingsMerger . This tool takes a number of Excel files, in the format required by XmlPreprocess / EnvironmentSettingsExporter , and outputs a single...

Today I published on CodePlex my first project, Sprinkler . It is both a tool and a framework, based on Powershell v2, aimed at simplifying deployment of applications, especially BizTalk-based. It stands on the shoulders of giants as it extends the Deployment...

It’s been a while, that I don’t write anything here. More will come in the next weeks about deployment. Today is just a piece of news: a new MSDN page on Customizing Team Foundation Build . Take also a look at Andy Lewis’ blog on this topic. Precious...

See Sean Jenkin's blog for the who, when, why, how, … For sure they did a great job: just think the amount of work they have done. Thousand of geeky blogs to migrate, each with its own tweaks and customizations (aren’t they geek?). Once I helped migrate...

Some time ago a colleague asked for help: he needed to write a XPath query that seemed complex. I suggested him to use VS and a simple XSLT as a quick debugging environment. Create a new XSLT file, substitute the template code with the following content...

This post is a follow-up to “ Builds: how many? ” and drills down how to compute the version number during the build. I assume knowledge of customizing the build identifier: you do not read the docs: “ How to: Customize Build Numbers ” for TFS 2008 and...

I admit I didn’t get it on my first, quick, reading of “ Inside the Microsoft Build Engine: Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build ” that MSBuild batching is somewhat counter-intuitive. I needed to have a nested loop in my script, like this pseudo code...

This is a tip for all developers, not for BuildMasters only. The issue is those pre and post-build events that developers use to add any conceivable code… especially code that assume a developer’s workstation folder structure. Such...

One small issue with the default layout of the Drop folder in TeamBuild is the lack of a fixed position for the outputs: binaries are written in $(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber) and the latter is different at each build. Many times is convenient having...

Today I have three interesting build errors that may happen and I want to spare you the time it took me to understand their causes. TF215085 / TF214007 This error may appear in your first build run: it says «An error occurred while connecting to agent...

There are some really useful TeamBuild tasks whose purpose or usage is not immediate. Such is WorkspaceItemConverterTask : it allows to transform a $ path — that is the path to a file or folder in TFS Version Control — to the physical path that the file...

Update ( 2011-03-21 ) Changed table layout. An interesting question I rarely see discussed is: how many build should I plan for in my project and how do they relate each other. This latter point is of paramount importance as it drives us...

This is a topic I haven’t frequently read about, so I will describe my personal findings and techniques. Testing My technique to testing the build itself is based on those assumptions: you need to test incremental change to your build, even when the project...

An issue you may have with Continuous Integration (CI) is this: whichever files you check-in, TFS will kick-off a CI build. Too often this is not what you want: the CI build should limit to monitor the trunk or a particular branch, and may only a portion...

This is a corollary of the Codeline Organization post. Where do I place the build script are in the Version Control? My opinion is to store them under the trunk or branch, i.e. inside the codeline. Please note that your actual branching structure is ininfluent...

Caveat: this post is not about branches but the content of the trunk and, as consequence, of the branches; look at Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide 2010 for more information about branching. So, what I will write about? On the organization of the various...

It’s been a looong time since I posted anything on this blog. I apologize with my twenty-five readers, but I prepared a bunch of posts, mostly on the build and deploy as it' has been my duty in the last months. See you soon.

e magari anche per altri che vogliono trovare un punto di appoggio in italiano , ecco che è nato http://www.powershell.it/ Buona fortuna,