Sampy's Blog

I just noticed this link in my trackback log for one of my previous post and I'd like to dispel a couple of rumors. On the internet, you need a verified and trusted Authenticode certificate to even prompt the user for permission elevation. That means...

Maybe it's the Object Thinking talking but I always balk when I hear someone talking about taking an agile practice and making it into a "rigorous engineering process." Check out this bit from The Code Project: Unit Test Patterns However, to achieve this...

I made mention on Channel9 that I'll have more free time come Monday ( http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=35544#35544 ). This lead some to think that Beta 2 would be done and I could move on to RTM. Ha! I wish. When you get closer and closer...

Hi. My name is Mike Sampson and I'm a developer here at Microsoft on the VB team and I work on deployment. Specifically, I work on Setup and Deployment projects (MSI's, Cab files, and MSMs) as well as the cool new web-ish ClickOnce deployment. In VB,...

VB Whidbey is getting some long overdue keywords: IsNot and Using being my personal favorites. However, there are some keywords that we don't have yet but I could see coming... Something - Basically this just means Not Nothing. All this really buys...

I recently received this request for a post from Channel9: I'm really interested ClickOnce and how it deals with security settings. I'm planning on creating C# game that uses managed direct3d. However even though its managed direct3d it...

Fixed 3 bugs today, not bad. I spent most of the afternoon banging my head up against a build problem having to do with my Win Forms designer created resx files. If I can't get it going in the next hour or so, I'll probably just work with my team tomorrow...

Okay, time to catch up a bit. This last week I've been working on a DCR (fixing up the signing property page) so I haven't had time to blog. Now that it's finished, I'm going to make up for lost time and get two quick blog entries out there. ...

Most people don't write every single piece of their app. Programs are linked together with shared libraries so that we can share functionality. Of course, we have to actually share these libraries for this to work. With .Net and COM components, this usually...

Oops, I meant to metion this when it happened but we entered Ask mode last Monday. We've also forked our code base to a new Beta2 branch that has started producing builds. This means that my branch will soon be available for checkins for RTM which is...

So I've spent the last few days devoting my spare time to moving the build process for the DLL that I work on (Micrsoft.VisualStudio.Publish.dll) to build with the new MSBuild rather than Build.exe (our current build system). I have to say that I love...

This week VB dev is "going dark" to fix bugs. This means we shut our doors, turn off Outloook, and get some real work done. We've peeled off Beta 2 and are working hard to drive down RTM bugs. By this point in the paragraph, you're probably thinking that...

On the VB team, we don't checkin to our source control system (Source Depot or sd) ourselves like mere mortals, we use the automated checkin system called Gauntlet. Gauntlet runs as an .hta app that collects your unsubmitted changelist, asks for some...

Shout it from the rooftops! ClickOnce is in Express!! Grab the new October Tech Preview (VB edition http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vbasic/ , scroll to the bottom and click the first link under headlines). Of course, considering that we are still...

There was a comment made about my “In the works” post that stated that: “Unless we can embed these other dependand installers inside the MSI and execute them from one package, there will always exist a deployment problem in VS.NET...

I've blogged before about ask mode and tell mode here in DevDiv so I figured I'd give you guys an update as to where we are now. The platform teams (runtime pieces) entered Ask mode this week while the design time teams (most of VS) remained in tell...

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=158154 Check out my Chicks Dig Unix t-shirt. I'm such a rebel.

I've started getting back into blogging more now that work is starting to wind down . You can find it on MSN Spaces here .

I just installed IE 7 for XP onto my work laptop and fired up Pluck , my RSS reader, half expecting it to crash or break. Thankfully, the only thing busted is launching Pluck from the systray. If you load IE manually, everthing works just fine. Not only...

Today I created the test project in Visual Studio Team System that will house the unit tests I'm writing for the Visual Studio publish component in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Publish.dll. With my copy of Working Effectively with Legacy Code in hand, it...

Today at 1pm Pacific time (4pm Eastern) check me out talking about deployment! MSDN Chats Main Page Direct Link to Chatroom I hope to see you there!!

I'm sure many of you have seen this but those of you with redistributable woes should check out the VS 2k3 Bootstrapper . Think of it as a very limited preview of what you'll be able to do in Whidbey. This will let you let you bootstrap the .Net framework...

It's been a busy week but I've come up with a list of things that I'll be posting about soon. Due to an overwhelming request for Setup and Deployment project information, I'm currently editing and putting finishing touches on a FAQ we use to answer internal...

A team mate of mine on the deployment team has just released an internal tool he was using for testing the genericness of our generic bootstrapper to the world on GotDotNet. You can grab it at: http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace...

So my post yesterday was the first one in a long while. I've been pretty bad about this blog thing since I started but this year is going to be different. As you've probably read from other bloggers here at MS, we've recently gone through our review...