XAML Build - Scrum Bug

Publish your VSTS extension using Team Build and Release Management

While I've released my VSTS Extension Tasks to GitHub [https://github.com/jessehouwing/vsts-extension-tasks] and the Visual Studio Marketplace [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jessehouwing.jessehouwing-vsts-extension-tasks] some time ago, I was reminded that I've never really blogged about it yet. You may wonder what it

Azure DevOps

Publish your extension to a local TFS Update 2 server

With the availability of extensions for TFS I've been looking for an easy way to publish extensions and their updates to the local marketplace. While I'm sure that Microsoft will at some point integrate the two, for now you need to manually sync the extensions between

Azure DevOps

Automatically populate your Source branch when publishing to Sonar

When you enable your build definition to trigger on multiple branches, you may not want them all to publish into the same Sonar project. Sonar has the concept of Branches, they're simply appended to the Project Key with a -. This prevents an old Hotfix build from messing

Azure DevOps

Access all available build variables from your VSTS Build task

> This StackOverflow answer covers the options in the Node and PowerShell3 handlers [https://stackoverflow.com/a/55610724/736079]. NOTE: This cmdlet works with the Powershell host that shipped with TFS 2015 RTM and which will be replaced with a new task runner. Whether this functionality will remain, is uncertain

Azure DevOps

Upgrading from XAML to Build 2015 with minimal changes

This series is currently a work in progress XAML builds on Visual Studio Team Services will be deprecated in September 2016. While support for XAML builds seems to stay around on-premise for a little while longer, it's time to upgrade to Build 2015. You may have invested quite

Azure DevOps

Debug your TFS/VSO 2015 builds

The new build engine of Visual Studio Online and TFS 2015 is great. It's simple, easy to configure and doesn't require complex workflow designers. But when it's not doing exactly what you want it to do, it can be hard to figure out where

Team Foundation Server

NDepend 6 offers native integration into TFS 2013

When Patrick Smacchia contacted me a couple of weeks back to look at his new TFS support for NDepend I was very excited. We've integrated NDepend through commandline calls with numerous clients and though that works, it's not very easy to get trend analysis or act

XAML Build

Staged execution of unit tests on Team Build

> Using Team Foundation Sever 2015 or newer or are you on Azure DevOps? Find updated guidance here [https://jessehouwing.net/staged-execution-of-tests-in-azure-devops-pipelines/]! When running Unit Tests in your build system, you may want to first run the most important suite, the one that should never fail, the ones that are

XAML Build

Building a .NET application using the GitUpgradeTemplate.xaml

Today I received a request which I first found strange. A team that migrated to Git, but still wanted to use their TFS 2008 era TFSBuild.proj. After seeing the investment made in that build file, I understood :). So we though to simply use the GitUpgradeTemplate.xaml which is provided

XAML Build

Resharper 8.1 goes gold & Resharper CLI

For those of you who are using Resharper, version 8.1 was just released with Typescript support and better integration with Visual Studio 2013. The full release blog can be found here [http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2013/12/resharper-81-goes-rtm-along-with-dotcover-dottrace/] . [http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2013/12/resharper-81-goes-rtm-along-with-dotcover-dottrace/] With Resharper

XAML Build

Enabling Resharper-CLI in Team Build

JetBrains is working on a Commandline interface that allows you to run the Resharper Code Inspections without opening up Visual Studio [http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/tag/command-line/]. Which is pretty cool! It's still in Early Access Program mode, but you can already download it and play around

XAML Build

Change the "Sources", "Binaries" and "TestResults" folders in Team Build

Team Build by default creates 2 folders on your build agent: * 2010 * Sources * Binaries * TestResults * 2012: * src * bin * TestResults * 2013: * src * bin * tst These folder names were shortened as part of the 2012 release, partially to resolve "Path too long" issues with team build. But some of your

XAML Build

Properly incorporate MsBuild arguments into your build process template

Ever wondered how to put features like Architecture Layer validation into your builds? If you bingle it you'll find loads of posts that tell you which argument to pass to msbuild. The official MSDN docs for this feature can be found here [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/

XAML Build

Use local NuGet file repository to use NuGet on a Build Server that has no access to the webs.

Scott Hanselman has blogged about using your local NuGet cache as your private local NuGet server in case your connection is down [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToAccessNuGetWhenNuGetorgIsDownOrYoureOnAPlane.aspx] . And that works great when you're working locally. When working with Team Build you have multiple options, one is

XAML Build

Update Build Quality and Keep Indefinitely in TFS from the commandline

As you probably know, TFS keeps all kinds of data behind when it finishes an automated build. Test Results, the stuff it copied to the drop folder, symbols etc. And by default it will keep the last 10 builds of data around and then starts cleaning up. When you deploy

Team Foundation Server

Which UIEditors are available for Team Build by default

| | | Types inheriting from UITypeEditor | Recently I was asked to extend a Build Template for Team Build. There were a few fancy things which were required for this template, including picking files and folders in Source Control, selecting Work Items etc. I looked around the documentation on msdn.microsoft.com, but

Team Foundation Server

Just-in-time updating of source files in an existing solution

Today a developer on my team tried to create an MsBuild task that would re-generate a few generated files during a Rebuild or as part of a Clean. Turned out to be a lot harder than we expected and it was mostly caused by an unknown feature that speeds up

Team Foundation Server

Solving: MSBUILD : error : Unable to read Code Analysis output report. Make sure that the directory is writable (default is the project output directory).

Today a new error popped up in Team Build. One we've never seen before and one that doesn't happen in Visual Studio during the build. The error was: MSBUILD : error : Unable to read Code Analysis output report. Make sure that the directory is writable (default is

XAML Build

Funny issue with Code Coverage and Reflection

Just stumbled upon a tricky change which happens to your assemblies when you're running your tests with Code Coverage enabled. Take the following piece of code: var types = typeof(Program).Assembly.GetExportedTypes(); foreach (Type t in types) { // ... } In our case the behavior of the code under test changed

XAML Build

Referencing Public/Private/Reference Assemblies folder from your project

When you're working on Code Analysis Rules [http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-SG/vstscode/thread/5c152faf-289c-48cf-9afd-8fbd153a577f] , Custom build activities, MSBuild tasks or anything that integrates directly in Team Build or Visual Studio for that matter, you often need to reference assemblies that ship with Visual Studio. These

Team Foundation Server

Things that make your unit tests unreliable

Over the past few months I've come across a lot of Unit Tests that triggered all kinds of crazy corner cases inside mstest. The most interesting observation is that the behavior inside Visual Studio is often different (or doesn't occur) than in Team Build when this