Espresso Fueled Agile Development : Smart Client Software Factory

How to migrate from CAB/SCSF to Composite WPF

mpuleio — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:12:10 GMT

Blaine recently posted that there is a CAB to Prism Comparison Available on Codeplex. This links to Composite Application Guidance for CAB Developers, a download from the CompositeWPF community site.

While this document does not help you decide IF[*] you should switch from CAB/SCSF to CompositeWPF, it does help with HOW, the differences between the two coding models, where the WorkItem went, how to emulate the behavior of WorkItems, and a few other interesting things. If you are a CAB developer considering the transition to WPF, you should definitely read this.

[*] Deciding which to use should be fairly simple: If you already know CAB/SCSF and you need to work in Windows Forms, stick with CAB/SCSF. If you need to host some WPF widgets in a Windows Forms environment, use CAB/SCSF. If you need a full WPF stack, use the Composite WPF guidance. If you are not constrained by the technology choice, things get tricky and the decision should factor in a whole bunch of factors including (but not limited to) which framework you are more comfortable in, which your team is more comfortable with, and where you see future investments in technology going. For each team/group/organization/company this is a different decision with different factors to consider.

Guidance on SharePoint

mpuleio — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:38:31 GMT

You all might be amazed by the number of emails, messages, and calls I get asking for any of the following:

Guidance on SharePoint
Requests to add SharePoint Guidance to WCSF
Requests to add "Office applications" support to SCSF

Well, I can finally help out folks looking for guidance on how to build SharePoint applications by saying "go check out the CodePlex project for patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance (http://www.codeplex.com/spg)." If you are hoping for SharePoint support in WCSF, you should probably check this out too.

Blaine and Francis are leading the effort on this project. I understand that they are tackling a few big challenges that customers have ranked as the most important including (this list is from the project's Vision Scope slide deck):

Unit testing and debugging
Packaging and deployment
Setting up a team development environment
Unclear which SharePoint features/ components to use and when
Solution maintenance/upgrade
How and when is SharePoint Designer applicable

If you do SharePoint development, you should check it out.

Composite Application Guidance for WPF Shipped!

mpuleio — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:26:13 GMT

A while back, I was Dev Lead on the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF) when we added the ability to host WPF controls in a Composite Application Block (CAB) application. Since then, the thinking in the WPF space has changed a bit, and p&p decided that offering guidance on full WPF applications was a good idea. Blaine, Francis, Bob, and Glenn have worked with a great team to create guidance for building composite applications using WPF. This guidance was started from a clean slate, as there are enough differences between Windows Forms and WPF (as we learned doing SCSF) to cause challenges. The result is the Composite Application Guidance for WPF June 2008, which recently shipped (formerly code-named Prism). This guidance is simple, easy to consume, can be used piecemeal, and should not have the steep learning curve that CAB and SCSF have. You can learn more at the Prism CodePlex Community Site, or at any of the places below.

Check out Francis's post, SHIPPED!!! Composite Application Guidance for WPF June 2008, for details and where to get it.

Or take a look at Glenn's post on the subject: Composite Application Guidance is Live

And here are a few other posts about what they have been up to, by person in chronological order:

From Francis:

From Blaine:

From Glenn:

I know I am looking forward to using this guidance when I get a chance to work with WPF more seriously.

Enjoy.

We really do listen to community feedback

mpuleio — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:27:31 GMT

The other day, we shipped the Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Release. Before we shipped, I asked the team to audit all the open work items in the queue on the SCSF community site's Issue Tracker and determine what we had fixed. We had used the items in the Issue Tracker before and during the project, to help guide some of the bug fixes and features. However, the audit allowed us to do some clean up and ensure we fixed a few things. Today, I used the results of that audit, and closed a few work items.

<Sidebar>

I did cheat a bit: I used the Visual Studio Team System integration with CodePlex so I could open up the list of all open work items in an Excel spreadsheet and publish changes back to the live Codeplex site. This made bulk editing a whole lot simpler, and saved me a lot of time.

</Sidebar>

Here are the results of the audit and work item closures:

Out of 89 open work items/ issues, we closed 45 today. A number of these had been fixed in the May 2007 release and never closed, a number were fixed in this release, and some were related to different weekly drops.
Out of the top 25 items (by community votes), we closed 13.
Looked at another way, we closed 1/2 of the open issues, and 1/2 of the top issues. Not bad.

So, keep up the discussion in our communities. We reply on the discussion boards, we actually do look at the open work items on occasion, and we do listen to the community.

Smart Client Software Factory – April 2008 Release is available on MSDN

mpuleio — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 03:25:00 GMT

The April 2008 release of the Smart Client Software Factory is now available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480482.aspx.

This is a port of the last release (May 2007, if I recall correctly) to VS2008. No new features were added. A few bugs were fixed, and a number of work items from CodePlex were closed.

This release supports Enterprise Library 3.1. It does not support Enterprise Library 4.0. If you want EntLib 4.0 (once it is released) you have the source code, and should be able to get it to work, if you really need to. I would not recommend it, as you will end up with two containers (Unity and the CAB container), which means code bloat and challenges deciding where objects should go.

Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Release Candidate Available

mpuleio — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:09:00 GMT

Friday, I posted we had a solid Beta. Today, I am letting you know that SCSF now has a Release Candidate (RC). The bug that appeared Friday is, we think, fixed. We actually published the RC before we completed any internal testing, so the customer who reported the issue would have a chance to verify the fix works on their system ASAP. Don't worry, we will do a solid test pass before determining if this RC will become the official release. (The fact that we are confident in our build system and the automated tests there helps with this sort of turnaround. :-) )

Please try out the Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Release Candidate, and report any issues on the SCSF CodePlex community site.

Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Beta Available

mpuleio — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:34:08 GMT

The SCSF April 2008 Beta Release that supports Visual Studio 2008 is now available.

We fixed all the known issues from the Alpha. It is solid, and may actually be a release candidate, rather than a beta.

Enjoy.

Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Alpha Available

mpuleio — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:16:03 GMT

For the past month or so, Blaine and I have been overseeing the development of the April release of the Smart Client Software Factory. This release is being done mostly by a team of vendors, freeing Blaine to run Prism and I to run the Acceptance Testing Guidance project. Blaine and I are still very involved, and I still review code changes at random, but the team does most of the work. The team has been doing a great job, and I think the community will be pleased with the results.

This is a port of SCSF to VS2008 and the .NET 3.5 framework. It uses Enterprise Library 3.1, not 4.0, intentionally. There is very little in 4.0 that will effect CAB and SCSF development, except Unity. Using Unity would require a nearly full re-write of CAB, and we don't currently have the time or people to do it right and deliver on our other commitments. However, if you really need EntLib4.0, it should work, and if not, you have the source code to fix it.

We did need to create a custom data provider to wrap the SqlCE functionality, as the version number of the platform DLL went from 9.x to 3.5. This replaces the EntLib 3.1 provider for SQLCE.

Also, this version of SCSF, just like the last one, supports hosting WPF controls in your WinForms CAB application. It does not support a full WPF app. For that, you want to see Prism or the Smart Client Factory Contrib project on CodePlex.

We are also fixing a few bugs, and updating the guidance package (Visual Studio automation) to work in VS2008.

You can download the Alpha release from the SCSF CodePlex community site.

Warning: This is an Alpha. We did a minimal amount of testing ("It compiles and links." -- "Good enough. Ship it"), and the computer we installed it on still boots, still runs VS, and seems ok. Use at your own risk.

We are trying to get this project wrapped up this month. If you see issues, please post them to the Issue Tracker at the SCSF CodePlex community site, and/or post to the discussion forum there. We will try to get any major problems, but will not be adding features.

Blaine is also posting about this SCSF April 2008 Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Published to CodePlex

Weird COM Exceptions in SCSF/CAB Unit Tests

mpuleio — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:17:28 GMT

The SCSF project was getting a weird error with the unit tests that were brought forward from VS2005 to VS2008.

All the unit tests would pass, however the test run would fail with the following error in a special log file:

One of the background threads threw exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.InvalidComObjectException: COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used.
at System.Windows.Input.TextServicesContext.StopTransitoryExtension()
at System.Windows.Input.TextServicesContext.Uninitialize(Boolean appDomainShutdown)
at System.Windows.Input.TextServicesContext.OnAppDomainUnloaded(Object sender, EventArgs args)

Of course, we had hundreds of these messages, and no way to correlate them with a specific unit test.

After some work, I was able to find a single repro case. After some research, it looks like any unit test that creates a Window of any type will do this. The fix is to add a TestCleanup method to your fixture like this one:

// Added a TestCleanup method to deal with the fact that the code was throwing an InvalidComObjectException
// with the information "COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used."
// Fix is based on this bug logged on Connect.Microsoft.Com:
// http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=318333
[TestCleanup]
public void CleanUp()
{
System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher.InvokeShutdown();
}

I know that unit tests that create Windows are not ideal, but for things like CAB and SCSF ( code bases I inherited) it may be necessary.

I hope this helps anyone else who runs into this issue.

The future of WPF Guidance

mpuleio — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:53:57 GMT

There is a lot of new information, all announced today, about the future of Acropolis, CAB, and WPF guidance from patterns & practices. This comes about after a lot of internal discussions between the patterns & practices Client / User Experience team and the Acropolis team.

If you want to know what is going on, start with the Acropolis team blog, and their article A new phase for the Acropolis project. Then read Glenn's post, WPF Composite Client, it's coming!

Between the two, there is a lot of information: how things have changed with Acropolis, a little bit of guidance about what to do now with apps you are developing, and the future plans of p&p and Acropolis.

If you have feedback, either post comments here, add comments to Glenn's post, or send email to Glenn (his address is at the end of his post).

[Note: Blaine also is linking to these articles in his own post.]

Acropolis and the future of CAB and SCSF

mpuleio — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:13:54 GMT

Now that Acropolis is finally public, and David Hill has talked about it, we at patterns & practices can discuss it and how it affects the future of several p&p deliverables. Glenn has done a fantastic summary of all the issues and the plan going forward. Check it out.

Projects that the Community can participate in...

mpuleio — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:41:00 GMT

Glenn posted about two new projects on CodePlex:

These two projects are there to allow the community to post contributions, extensions, modules, etc that others can use. They compliment Enterprise Library Contrib, which Tom has already posted about.

Enjoy.

Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 Shipped!

mpuleio — Mon, 21 May 2007 00:46:00 GMT

We (finally) shipped the May 2007 version of SCSF. I should have posted earlier, but I needed a short break from computers in general. ;-)

Here are links to a few other posts that other folks from the team have done. Without a great team, this project would not have been possible:

Here are the top three complaints and problems I have seen so far, and solutions:

There are a few folks complaining about the CodePlex Releases page being out of date. Oops. It is now fixed. It had been on the list to do Friday, but slipped to Monday morning.
Other folks are complaining about a lack of a list of dependencies and links to these dependencies. When you launch the installer, on the first page of the wizard is a button on the bottom left that says "Dependency Checker". Click it, wait a moment, and let the application scan your computer. It checks for a few key pieces of software, and provides download links to each of them.
Finally, folks have mentioned the lack of an upgrade path from SCSF v1. Basically, SCSF May 2007 is a replacement. SCSF May 2007 does not work side-by-side with SCSF June 2006. You must uninstall the old version before installing the new one. The solutions you had from v1 can have the new GP enabled on them if you want. There are differences in functionality, but hopefully for the better.

Now, I am going to enjoy the rest of my weekend, before we start on the next versions of the Web Client Software Factory tomorrow morning.

Schedule Updates

mpuleio — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:49:35 GMT

Blaine has a great post on updates for the schedules for Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 and Web Client Software Factory 1.1.

All I can say is that the delay in SCSF was for two very good reasons, and the community will be happier with the results of the delay.

Call for Feedback

mpuleio — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:54:00 GMT

There are two areas we are looking for feedback from the community, software factories and possible functionality the Web Client Software Factory.

In the past year or so, patterns & practices has released five factories. Glenn, Tom, and Don have requested feedback (via a survey) on software factories and what the community thinks about it. So, please fill out the survey.

Glenn is also asking for users of the Web Client Software Factory to help define what the highest requested feature for our second release is. Lots of folks have been voting for "Ajax Support in the WCSF" on the WCSF CodePlex community site. From Glenn's post:

Click on the item above you like more to go to the matching item in Issue Tracker and then click on "Vote"

Thanks for the input

[Note: Ooops. I've been so focused on shipping SCSF I made a typo above. Sorry about any confusion.].