Issues with COM and ClickOnce Deployments
Another post where our technical guru here on WassupJose delivers the content straight to my inbox. Thankfully for the huddled masses I enjoy my role has Robin Hood. Reap the benefits of my hand me downs and check out how Jose solves using COM components with ClickOnce Deployments.
TFS Notes: Unplanned Work Report
The IT department I work for decided that I should host a TFS presentation, so they could learn all the cool stuff I'm doing. During the presentation a question was raised about the Unplanned Work Report that comes out of the box with TFS. At the time I didn't have an answer, but I pinged WassupJose on the question and he had an excellent answer via email that I wanted to highlight here. Thanks Jose!
UI Frustrations
A couple days ago, I posted that I am nearing completion of a personal web project. Well, I should have known better than to speak too soon. The balance of the tasks are UI-related, i.e. ensure xhtml compliance, css, cross-browser testing, etc.
The work is easy, but resource intensive. The one item that is posing a challenge as stated before is the css work. There are so many hacks out there to address cross-browser issues that I need to get a hold of this before moving forward.
Also, I think I am going to skip the logo designs and go with a text-based version. I need to keep things simple, because I can see the end and certainly do NOT want these remaining few tasks to derail further progress. Dammit.
IADB!
I am nearing the completion of a personal project that I started over a year ago. It started off like most projects, but I lost momentum several times. Whatever the reasons, it made it that much more difficult to continue.
It would have been easy to quit, but that is not going to happen. So, I have been chipping away at the project these past couple of months. Today, I realized that I have only a few tasks to complete. I will announce the rest on another blog.
WTFs Per Minute
Bruahaha! This has been floating around for some time, but it is always appropriate. Check out the original post on OSNews and the coding buddy post on Coding Horror. Personally, I welcome code reviews and want to learn from my mistakes!
What Is Wrong
With this picture? A "Senior" Software Engineer posted a question to a LinkedIn.com Group regarding a null reference. Apparently, he is using the NHibernate framework and is getting an error.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Excuse me while I rant here, but if he is a Senior-level engineer and he can not solve a null reference issue there is problem. Has this engineer ever heard of debugging or is he one of the lazy !#$%^& I have been posting about for months? Let me Google that for you!
TFS Notes: Property and Item Syntax
One of the first things that escaped me when first dealing with customizing msbuild was the syntax. I assume its because the people who are documenting it are so used to using it that it just seems common place.
To access a property within a PropertyGroup use
$(PropertyName)
A property group can be defined at any time within your msbuild folder and will take the last value assigned to it if declared in multiple places. Think of a property as a scalar variable.
To access an item within an ItemGroup use
@(ItemName)
to access an items Metadata use
@(ItemName->'%(MetaData)'
Think of an ItemGroup as a collection of objects. Using the @ symbol is similar to using a FOR loop. If you use this syntax ina situation where only one value is allowed then the ItemProperty will perform a transformation and output the data to a semi-colon delimited string.
TFS Notes: Reserved Properties
MSBuild has a list of reserved properties that can be used but not overwritten. Here is a list of these properties.
- MSBuildProjectDirectory
- MSBuildProjectDirectoryNoRoot
- MSBuildProjectFile
- MSBuildProjectExtension
- MSBuildFullPath
- MSBuildToolsPath
- MSBuildProjectDefaultTargets
- MSBuildExtensionsPath
- MSBuildNodeCount
- MSBuildStartupDirectory
- MSBuildToolsPath
- MSBuildToolsVersion
Apple Store Saturation
Apparently, there are 20,000 programs available for download from the App Store. Damn! If one is thinking about entering into this arena, they are in for a challenge. Funny, because Gman and I were discussing this very topic several days ago.
How does one market their program and stand out in the endless sea of applications? I have several ideas, but think one key strategy is to leverage social networking and video sharing communities, i.e. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. to promote your program.
Another idea has the potential to reach millions of potential buyers, but has not been used to date. I need to flush this out, before I open my big mouth. If anyone would like to share their ideas, please leave us a comment.
TFS Notes: Well Known Metadata
When you create an ItemGroup within an MSBuild proj file there is some well known metadata that is immediately available for your consumption assuming the Item you loaded was a file path. Here is a list of that Metadata.
- FullPath
- RootDir
- FileName
- Extension
- RelativeDir
- Directory
- RecursiveDir
- Identity
- ModifiedTime
- CreatedTime
- AccessedTime