First ALM Ranger guidance in Ebook format

By based on a Visual Studio User Voice request and a lot of internal discussions we, the ALM Rangers, are proud to present our very first official ebook formatted guidance. Available in epub and mobi format. This has been a long standing wish from my side, since I really prefer ebook or real paper over reading from screen.

If you're as happy as I am about the release of the guidance in ebook format, then please share your positive feedback. If you're seeing issues on your e-reader or other possible improvements, please also leave feedback.

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Code Review Check-in Policy for TFS 2012

The question whether you can force that Code Reviews must be done before checking in a set of changes in TFS. And up until recently there wasn't. Colin created a check-in policy and shared it on the Visual Studio Gallery.

It will show up like this:

Grab it while it's hot it this is something you really want/need. I'll personally not be using it, since I currently have a co-located team with excellent communication going on at the moment.

Connecting Visual Studio 2005 to TFS 2012 and the Team Foundation Service on XP

In a previous post I explained how to connect Visual Studio 2005 to Team Foundation Server 2012 and the Team Foundation Services. This solution works for Windows 7 and 8, but not on Windows XP, since Team Explorer 2012 cannot be installed on Windows XP. There is a workaround for this now through the updated version of the MSSCCI provider for 2010, which now works with Visual Studio 2005 :

The Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enables integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control with products that do not support Team Explorer integration.
This version includes:

• Updated provider to link against VS 2010 RTM TFS assemblies
• Improved functionality and performance when used inside PowerBuilder
• Improved handling of branched solutions in SQL Server Management Studio
• Decreased number of server prompts
• Improved error reporting
• Added support for Visual Studio 2005 to enable VS2005 clients intalled on Windows XP to connect to TFS2012

Creating a Custom Unit Test Generator Provider Plugin for Specflow 1.9

After getting CodedUI Code First and Specflow to play nicely together in the past week, we ran into a few issues with the distribution of the Custom Code Generator Provider assembly to all team members. The SpecFlow binaries installed under a path that contains a random character string and I felt a bit unhappy about the way that other developers had resolved this issue by placing the assembly in the NuGet package folder. Especially since we don't check in the binaries in TFS and package restore might go funcky.

The SpecFlow documentation mentions the new way of registering your Custom Generators through the new configuration item. That is where the documentation ends. But the promise of being able to store your plugin relatively to the test project root looked very promising so I got to work.There is now a SpecFlow.CustomPlugin NuGet Package which will get you started creating your own Specflow plugin. To add the package you must create a new Class Library project using .NET Framework 4.0 or 4.5.

Combining CodedUI Code first, SpecFlow and Visual Studio 2012

Today we tried to combine a number of different test technologies on the latest version of Visual Studio and ran into a few small issues. We found a work around for all of them. So if you want to use the BDD style of Specflow to test the UI of your applications, hold tight.

Make sure you have a version of Visual Studio that supports CodedUI tests (Premium or Ultimate) and install the following add-ons to enable SpecFlow:

• SpecFlow (from the Visual Studio Gallery)

Create a new test project (we're using an MsTest based test project, since CodedUI requires that) and use the package manager or the package manager console to add the following NuGet packages:

• CodedUI Code First
• SpecFlow

Techdays 2013 presentation - Better code through review and tools

By request of the audience, a link to the slide deck of our Techdays 2013 presentation on Better code through review and tools (in Dutch). There isn't too much useful information in the deck itself, since Thomas Huijer and I provided a lot of anecdotal experience along with the rather barren slides. But should you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Unfortunately, the presentation wasn't recorded this year.

Links to interesting content:

• Scrum Power Tools
• Review Sidekicks
• StyleCop
• Definition of Done checkbox list

Presentation after the break.

Bring back the "Create Unit Tests" feature from Visual Studio 2010?

There's a feature request on User Voice that requests Microsoft to bring back the "Create Unit Test" menu item which was removed in Visual Studio 2012. I've seen it come up as a potential Ranger solution and it's been getting a lot of votes so far.

It turns out that the feature has been there all along, was it was just removed from the ever crowded right-click context menu? Or is there something else at work here? It's my belief, not confirmed or backed by the Product Team in any way, that it was removed to promote a better practice for writing unit tests. The fact that this feature only works for MsTest and not for the XUnit and NUnit, might also have been an influence to remove the menu item.

The danger of generating unit tests from the implementation is that chances are likely you'll be testing the implementation and not the actual functionality. This is a common problem with writing tests after writing the code. Since you already know exactly how the 'intended' functionality has been implemented, it's really easy to fall into the trap of mimicking or even duplicating the functionality in your test. The result is that whenever the implementation changes, your test is likely to fail, even when the functionality remained the same.

So, if you really liked the "Create Unit Test" menu item, sure, you can bring it back. But I'd strongly suggest you look at the way you write your tests.