November 2006 - Posts
I just updated my primer/tutorial/walkthrough on CruiseControl.NET with some information about how to use msbuild.exe instead of devenv.exe in your minimal cc.net configuration. One good reason to go with msbuild is that you don't need to install VS.NET on a dedicated build server, and you can also target unit tests, performance tests, code analysis etc. that you may have added using the Team Edition versions of VS.NET.
Please check it out and comment on it if you please.
I'm not sure what has happened with the WinXP Automatic Updates lately, but a while ago I noticed (for the first time) I had an option to Shut down and install updates at the same time. I tried it the second time I saw it and naturally it hung my whole system.
The machine wasn't working properly after that of course, but I managed to get in and install the updates more or less manually.
Today I got new problems with the updates. It started with a crash in the svchost.exe process and I tried to debug and see what it was. Windows popped up a webpage telling me there was a fix for this specific "Generic Host bla bla bla" problem. I installed it, it told me it won't fully work until I restart my machine. Alright, I kept running for a while, got the svchost.exe crash again and decided to restart.
After the restart, WinXP wanted to start install some Updates it appearently had in queue! At login? Weird. It didn't ask and I couldn't stop it. Of course the installation failed as it hung my whole box. I let it sit there for a long time before I decided to restart the machine.
Anyway, what saved me today was to restart the machine, hit F8, select to start with a "configuration that worked" or whatever the menu option says. Now I'm in, I've configured Automatic Updates in a way so that I will decide myself when to download and install. All seems to work WAY better now.
I wonder how far away SP3 is... I think I'm going for Vista as soon as I get my hands on the RTM version.
UPDATE: LOL, I was too fast... after this "manual" Windows Update and the recommended reboot, I got a new crash after logging into Windows, now it was the AutoUpdate.exe crashing on my... yeah... LET ME WORK FOR LOVE'S SAKE!
My buddy Jan-Erik has been listening to podcasts for a while now, and he pointed me to a program called Doppler which seems to be a decent podcast aggregator. I've only just started to use it, but it looks nice and seems to behave well. It got all the bells and whistles we're getting used to nowadays - async downloads, system tray, notifications and so on, and you can turn these features on and off as you please.
Go check Doppler out at http://www.dopplerradio.net/
Now I need to look for a seamless way to get these things over to my Sony Ericsson mobile without too many clicks.
Found a newly started podcast, one which haven't got a name yet even. So far called "developer podcast", but they would like to get some ideas for a name. "They" are Derek Hatchard and Mike Mullen and you find links to their own blogs from their podcast site. They have recorded 2 shows so far and the sound quality could be better, but they give some good tips about Vista which are useful and have some links to resources they talked about on their blog.
You find these guys at http://netcasts.ardentdev.com/
Oh yeah! Thanks to Scott Hanselman for podcasting and blogging about this tool, and thanks Microsoft for making this one a free Windows Live Service. Most of you know that Scott is testing most of the software tools that ever gets created and let me quote some of the things he's saying about FolderShare:
Sure, there's other applications that have tried to solve problems like this before, but holy crap FolderShare nails it.
There's so much you can do with it, like automatically mirror pictures, music and so on across your machines with a few clicks. They just have to be connected to the Internet. It's also secure. I now have my IE Favourites synced between my machines, and it was done with like 2-3 clicks.
Even though it's free now, you got a few limitations to how many folders and files you can share right now. That will probably change in the future. If you look at https://www.foldershare.com/info/plans.php you see that there is a limit to 10 folders and 10.000 files at the moment, but hey, that will take you far. I've also seen a max filesize of 2GB being mentioned on the FolderShare web site so I'm not sure what's the deal here.
It's beautiful anyway, go download already!
I've soon listened to all shows that have been recorded by Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin on Hanselminutes (http://www.hanselminutes.com/), and I've started to dig around for some more podcasts, preferably similar to the Hanselminutes stuff. I've been listening to .NET Rocks (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/) for some time as well, and I just ran upon the Polymorphic Podcast (http://polymorphicpodcast.com/) which seems to be just great. Polymorphic is about most things .NET related and it's hosted by Craig Shoemaker.
Then there's the ASP.NET Podcasts, hosted by Wallace B. (Wally) McClure and Paul Glavich, which I haven't listened to (or looked at for that matter because they also have some viewable material) at http://aspnetpodcast.com or better yet http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/default.aspx
If you know of any other similar podcasts, please let me know and I'll add them to this page.
I need to think of a way to automatically download the files and have them synced with my SonyE ricsson mobile phone... Or get a better "download deal" with my phone company and create a small program that I can run on the mobile phone to download these podcasts directly. It's too expensive for me to download these files over the mobile network as I have to pay for the bytes...
Note of warning - don't follow the steps I did. Better make sure you install things in the right order. Have a quick look down at the end where I have a "Lessons Learned" :p
The Logbook
It's Saturday morning and I'm about to install .NET 3.0 and Orcas and whateverelse I might need to get a proper 3.0 platform up and running on a WinXP VPC. It's 11am and I won't be sitting in front of the box all day to do this because I got loads of other stuff to do. The plan is to uninstall a few old things, then do something else, then download one part, install it and do something else and keep doing this until thing seem ok. Goal is to have a decent WinXP + .NET 3.0 + Orcas install to play around with by the end of the day :)
11:00am - Need a new VPC machine to install things on, so I start by taking a copy of my (almost) vanilla WinXP SP2 VPC file I always keep handy.
11:30am - Phew! That took a while to copy... I'm in there now, uninstalling a few old things I no longer need. I noticed I copied the wrong VPC file so I got a few old WinFX things I need to remove.
11:55am - All done, downloading the SDK setup file... BTW, Nicholas Allen got a page where he lists things you need to install: http://blogs.msdn.com/drnick/archive/2006/11/07/v1-rtm-downloads.aspx
12:10pm After reading up on some things, I started the install of "Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components". It complains that I still got a few old things I should remove (FxCop etc.) and retry install. That's a good one Microsoft. Thanks. Uninstalling and retrying... this install is downloading during installation, so it might take a while. I'm off to do something else while that is running... BTW. The full install requires some 2.3 GB of disk space.
12:18pm BANG! Installation bombed. It crashed during the FxCop installation it seems. I wanted to read about the error, but when the "report to ms" dialog was done, it closed the installation dialogs... I guess I should restart XP and restart the installation again... gah!
12:25pm It says I must first install the old version... here goes. What old version? Taking a look at the installed programs and uninstalling whatever seems to be related to any SDKs...
12:40pm Ngggh... still refusing to install. Uninstalling even more and trying again. Lessons learned - start out with a very, very fresh XP + VS.NET 2005 box. Kids, don't try this on your daddy's machine at home. I think I'm off to cut my hair and have something to eat.
15:30pm Right, I'm back. I've unistalled everything I think is remotely related to the old WinFX stuff, and also let WinXP finish installing a few updates it had on queue... took a while it did. Starting a new install of .NET 3.0 SDK again. Next, next, next, next... BANG! My whole VPC now crashed as the installer was about to start doing its real work. Jeeeez... what is this?
15:35pm Starting VPC again and we'll see if the install works better this time. Wow... it's actually looking good now.
16:20pm Still installing...
16:25pm Done! Now on to the next install, Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP, starting now...
16:55pm I'm back. Had something to eat. Right, installing the Orcas stuff didn't work, because it needs the .NET 3.0 runtime stuff on the machine... Weird, because one would think it got installed with the SDK... whatever, installing the runtime now. Seems that I didn't read right stuff :D
17:55pm This is your host this evening, back from driving my daughter to a street dance show she's in. The runtime is installed and I'm back in track again - time to install the WCF/WPF extensions... why does the task "merging of the help collections" give me the chills? Because "merging of the help collections might take some time"...
18:15pm Everything looks fine, now installing the Workflow extensions... Why does all these installation look different? Seems like every team at Microsoft is using their own installer and tools for making these packages? One would think that there were some kind of guidelines that they should try and use the same templates. Anyway, as long as it works I'm happy.
19:15pm Took a break. Workflow Foundation extensions seems to be installed OK, time to fire up VS.NET and see if it works :p
(a few minutes later) It works!! Yay! I need a drink...
Lessons learned:
a) Make sure you got a few hours of spare time... ;)
b) Try to have an as clean as possible machine from start - WinXP SP2 and VS.NET 2005, that's all. Use a virtual machine if possible, don't mess up the box you're working on every day.
c) Remove anything even remotely related to older .NET 3.0 / WinFX installations.
d) Install things in this order:
1. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package
2. Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
3. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP
4. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
e) Voilá, you're (hopefully) done, start making your first WPF app or something already!
I'm thinking of writing a small utility to manage which of my apps gets started at startup of Windows, depending on if my laptop is running on batteries or not. Normally, when I boot it up on batteries, I don't want to start things such as my blog reader and a few other things.
The thing is it's very simple to detect from .NET if you are running on batteries or not. The SystemInformation type gives you all that and more:
using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace BatteryConsole
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
PowerStatus ps = SystemInformation.PowerStatus;
if(ps.PowerLineStatus == PowerLineStatus.Online)
Console.Write("Your power cable is connected, and ");
else
Console.Write("You are running on batteries, and ");
Console.WriteLine("your battery level is on {0}", (ps.BatteryLifePercent * 100) + "%");
}
}
}
I'll get back if I ever get that small program written.
I've started to listen to podcasts on my mobile phone while commuting to where I work at the moment, and it's pretty cool. I've listened to quite a few shows by Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin available at http://www.hanselminutes.com and I am surprised (well not really) by the quality. It's relaxed, sit-back kind of shows and Carl asks very good questions. You also get some very good tips about tools and blogs.
The shows I've enjoyed most so far I think is the one on Test Driven and the follow up on Mock Objects. The one on Infocards were pretty interesting as well, and... ;)
Have to hunt for more podcasts... I spend lots of time on trains these days.
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