Put the Powershell in the folder of the .CHM file and any user can launch the help file via right-click on the .PS1 and selecting ‘Run with Powershell’.

Set-ExecutionPolicy might need to be called first: More on Set-ExecutionPolicy

This web application allows you to compare the default visual studio code analysis rule sets against each other.
Code Analysis Rule Set Compare

The website runs on Windows Azure Websites.
I have used continuous deployment together with Team Foundation Service.
Great experience overall.

It’s brought to you by Microsoft, but it’s open source, like most things MS is releasing lately.
But it’s not just for .NET. You can use it in node.js too, you just need the compiler (via npm).
It’s integrates nicely with Visual Studio, but also with Sublime Text, Vim, etc…

Some links to get started with TypeScript:

• The official site: http://www.typescriptlang.org/ (very nice playground there!)
• Announcement and a must see video: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/10/01/typescript-javascript-development-at-application-scale.aspx
• Placing TypeScript in context with similar frameworks/languages: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhyDoesTypeScriptHaveToBeTheAnswerToAnything.aspx
• Unofficial centralized repo of TypeScript definitions file for popular JavaScript libraries: https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped

I’m pretty sure TypeScript is here to stay. I only hope that others communities (non .net) will look past the fact that Microsoft is behind this (the people that brought you IE6 and IE7) and embrace this new wonder in front-end development.

What do you think? Will TypeScript make it to 2013?

In Visual Studio 2012, the .pdb files where excluded when publishing web applications in release mode. The development of these web applications was started in Visual Studio 2010 and I never had this problem. Somehow something changed after the solutions/projects very opened in VS2012.

Under the Project Properties > Build > Advanced, the ‘Debug Info’ was still set to ‘pdb-only’. So building in release does create the .pdb files.
However, when running the ‘publish’ to deploy to file system (in context menu of the project, under the build menu) the .pdb files are not copied.
They don’t appear on the destination folder which makes sense because they aren’t even copied to the ‘\obj\Release\Package\PackageTmp\bin’.
But why are they not copied to the package folder?

Like a lot of things, the answer is very simple and the solution even more so.
After digging around, I noticed a new option in Visual Studio 2012 for Web Publish: exclude generated debug symbols.
New option? Ok, not really. I just never saw it before. Turns out was there in Visual Studio 2010 also. But when converting my projects, this option got enabled somehow.

You can find this option under the Project Properties > Package/Publish Web.
Just uncheck the checkbox “Exclude generated debug symbols” and your .pdb files will be published like before.

Uncheck the ‘Exclude generated debug symbols’ checkbox to include .pdb files in your publish.

Great, I’ve got my useful info back in the stack trace of exceptions! And so do you I hope.

After enabling this for a solution I’m working on, I had no problem running this locally. I removed my original packages folder from disc, and the build succeeded because nuget.exe (reference in the build) was able to download the packages. However… this didn’t work on our tfs build server.

NuGet package restore from build server – not downloading packages

The log file showed the command that was run:

"C:\Builds\1\TeamProjectName\TeamProjectName_Dev_CI\Sources\.nuget\nuget.exe" install "C:\Builds\1\TeamProjectName\TeamProjectName_Dev_CI\Sources\src\TeamProjectName.Services\packages.config" -source "https://nuget.org/api/v2/" -o "C:\Builds\1\TeamProjectName\TeamProjectName_Dev_CI\Sources\packages"

After running this from the command prompt, the output folder (packages) was not only empty, it didn’t even exist. Worse, running the command didn’t even give a hint of a failure.

The solution for me:
Starting with NuGet 2.0 there’s a new option to give NuGet consent to download packages: Allow NuGet to download missing files during build.
These are the steps to fix this problem:

• Go to your build server (rdp or physical)
• Start Visual Studio
• Check the version of NuGet under Tools > Extension Manager
  • Update to v2.0 if needed and restart Visual Studio
  • You might need to uninstall, restart and install if simple update doesn’t work.
• Open up the NuGet settings under Tools > Options > Package Manager
• Make sure the Allow NuGet to download missing files during build checkbox is checked.

Possible solution if NuGet package restore fail on build server.
Make sure the consent checkbox is checked.

If your build runs under a different account

Maybe you can’t/won’t run Visual Studio under the account the build runs. Or maybe visual studio isn’t even installed.
NuGet will look for an environment variable as a workaround.
Create an environment variable named ‘EnableNuGetPackageRestore‘ with the value ‘true‘.
Right-click computer, properties, advanced system settings, environment variables, hit New under system variables, create the variable and reboot the machine.

Still not solved?

If this didn’t solve the problem, other things to try for your package restore to work on your build server:

• Check the NuGet.targets file in the .nuget folder. And look for PackageSource. You can specify repositories there if you have a custom NuGet gallery or need to reference MyGet or similar.
• Check the firewall of proxy in your network. NuGet might be blocked.

Was this post helpful to you? Please let me know in the comments.

MSBuild – build failure – target platform HPD

The specified solution configuration "release|HPD" is invalid.

It turns out that MSBuild.exe looks for an environment variable if you don’t explicitly define a platform in the arguments.

And indeed, my System Environment Variables contain a ‘Platform’ variable with the value ‘HPD’.
What’s HPD you might ask? My machine is a HP Pavilion Elite, a desktop machine. So I guess that makes the HPD acronym.

The solution however is very simple, you either remove the environment variable or you define the platform when calling msbuild.exe like this:

%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\msbuild.exe
Build\Build.proj /p:Configuration="%config%" /p:Platform="Any CPU"

Source: MSBuild and its use of the “Platform” environment variable

const int port = 22;
const string host = "domainna.me";
const string username = "chucknorris";
const string password = "norrischuck";
const string workingdirectory = "/highway/hell";
const string uploadfile = @"c:\yourfilegoeshere.txt";

Console.WriteLine("Creating client and connecting");
using (var client = new SftpClient(host, port, username, password))
{
    client.Connect();
    Console.WriteLine("Connected to {0}", host);

    client.ChangeDirectory(workingdirectory);
    Console.WriteLine("Changed directory to {0}", workingdirectory);

    var listDirectory = client.ListDirectory(workingdirectory);
    Console.WriteLine("Listing directory:");
    foreach (var fi in listDirectory)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(" - " + fi.Name);
    }

    using (var fileStream = new FileStream(uploadfile, FileMode.Open))
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Uploading {0} ({1:N0} bytes)",
                            uploadfile, fileStream.Length);
        client.BufferSize = 4 * 1024; // bypass Payload error large files
        client.UploadFile(fileStream, Path.GetFileName(uploadfile));
    }
}

You must have the TFS Power Tools installed: Team Foundation Server Power Tools September 2010

In the command prompt or run dialog, you execute:

tfpt searchcs

This will bring up a very handy dialog, allowing you to set some filters, including the check-in notes.

TFS 2010 – Custom Note Search w/ Power Tools

Something did change in this RC however: the text-shadow property just gets ignored.
In the beta, text with text-shadow on it, looked really weird. So it’s actually better in the RC now.

Update:

IE9 = no text-shadow
IE10 = text-shadow supported
What is supported in what browser?
See the Can I use site:
http://caniuse.com/#search=text-shadow

Is there still hope?

I’m giving up hope that the final release of IE9 will support text-shadow.
If you look at the CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer page (scroll down to Font and Text – CSS3), it’s pretty clear: ‘No‘.

The text-shadow is part of CSS3. Sure, CSS3 is still in draft (probably for many more years), but that doesn’t stop the Chrome, Firefox, Opera, .. dev teams from implementing.
Maybe the IE dev team hasn’t found a way to make it look good?

Addendum (couple of hours later)

• More bad news – “Internet Explorer does not support any of the CSS3 multi-column layout properties.”
  Microsoft prevents us from using this very handy CSS3 feature. I’m sure there’ll be a jQuery plugin for it.
• Some goods news – IE9 will have support form ‘transform’, be it in the form of -ms-transform.

IE9 = no text-shadow
IE10 = text-shadow supported
What is supported in what browser? 
See the Can I use site: http://caniuse.com/#search=text-shadow 

I’m working on a new project which will be released in a few months and I have the luxery to only support the latest version of 4 A-grade browsers:

• Firefox 4 (beta 6 at this time)
• Chrome 6 (or 7… who can keep count here?)
• Safari 5
• and IE9, which was recently released as a beta and I saw  fully demoed at Microsoft’s Remix event last week

It’s great to be able to use CSS3. Saves a lot of work on having to create a bunch of images for rounded corners in all sorts of dimensions and colors, but also new images for buttons with different text. Now I rely on the new CSS3 properties like background gradients, rounded corners and text shadow.
IE9 is doing a very good job at all this. My application is running fast thanks to the new javascript engine. But there is one thing that looked fishy.

The new CSS3 text-shadow property has not been implemented in IE9 beta.

I found an interesting page on CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer in which it’s clear that this feature has not been implemented yet by the dev team.
However, it looks like the pixels that are supposed to be the shadow are actually just take the color of the text. This makes it look like the font weight is set to bold.
As far as I know, the text-shadow property is an official CSS3 property, so I’m guessing it will be available in a next release.

PS: If you’re viewing this blog in IE9 beta, you’ll might also miss out on the text shadow I’m using in the current theme of this WordPress blog. Unless I changed my theme again…