michal.Log : General

Cool tracing with Visual Studio

michalma — Mon, 28 May 2007 21:15:00 GMT

Because we are preparing Beta2 of Orcas, I started spending more and more time with the debugger and with tracing enabled in our OM (vide: http://blogs.msdn.com/michalma/archive/2006/12/08/tracing-in-tfs-msscci-provider.aspx). As we all know there are 2 listeners we usually use - file listeners, that dumps everything into file and perf listener that pops up cool dialog, but lacks details. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that just by attaching the debugger to the running app, we add yet another listener - one that dumps everything into Output Window in VS. It's very cool, because while stepping through the code we can immediately see what kind of server calls where made. At first I wasn't sure if this is not some kind of magic Buck put into our OM. But no - even in the simplest application, when you put

Trace.TraceInformation("Hola Mundo!");

it will be written in the Output Window. Cool :)

Switching between multiple Msscci providers

michalma — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:15:00 GMT

People who start using TFS Msscci provider, usually want to keep working with the old provider (e.g. SourceSafe). Unfortunately, function to switch between different multiple Msscci providers is feature of the IDE, not of the provider. VB6, VC6 and VS 2003 does not support it, only FoxPro guys are lucky. As the workaround I would suggest the following solutions:

Manual changing of the registry.
Msscci configuration lives in registry, in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SourceCodeControlProvider
What is important for VB6, VC6 and VS2003 users is value of ProviderRegKey, which stores the location of the default provider. Every provider is also registering it's location under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SourceCodeControlProvider\InstalledSCCProviders
So the simplest way to change the current Msscci provider is to copy it's location from InstalledSCCProviders (e.g. Software\Microsoft\SourceSafe) and paste it into ProviderRegKey.
Registry script
Prepare registry script that will do the job:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SourceCodeControlProvider]
"ProviderRegKey"="Software\\Microsoft\\SourceSafe"
Powertoy
Of course the best way would be to use small application, leaving in the system tray, which would let us change the value of ProviderRegKey.

Of course playing with system registry is dangerous, do it on your own risk,

UPDATE 5/31/2006

Two tools which allow to change default Msscci provider were mentioned in the msdn's forum:

Applying for job at MS

michalma — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:41:00 GMT

Some folks from Poland have asked me about recruitment process and applying for Microsoft. I’ll post it in English because

other people can use those information
you must know English to apply (and to be successful Software Engineer at all)

I can tell only about after college recruitment, because this is the one I took part in. There are two ways. You can check career site for the first one. The second (and probably easier) is (and this was my path) to be recommended by somebody who is already taking part in the recruitment process. If you study on Poznan University of Technology it shouldn’t be big problem (there are always a few people who have won international competitions :) When you invited for interview, remember that what really matters is how you think. I was Java acolyte and didn’t have idea about any C++/.net features and libraries (except what I read on Java forums ;)). Only some basic knowledge of C is required.

Good luck

Please allow me to introduce myself

michalma — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 02:08:00 GMT

I’m currently Software Development Engineer in Team Foundation Version Control Client team. I work for Microsoft, on the client-side, on the .NET platform, in USA just for few months (since October 2005). Before I was learning, studying and working in beautify city Poznan, in western Poland. I used to work on the GRID enabled projects, web applications (PHP and few Java frameworks) and mobile tools. As you can see it was quite a change for me (and still is ;)

What I will be blogging about?

A few things. First of all – Msscci provider for Team Foundation Server, my first task in MS. The work on it is really challenging and I hope that it’ll let users of many different IDEs experience the power of TFS. Second – everything that is connected to .net, C#, Visual Studio. Third – who knows, this is a blog, right?