Remote desktop is something which I hold very dear to my heart. Its actually quite rare that Im on a computer where Im not remotely logged in to my home machine. From my perspective, why would I want to deal with moving from computer to computer when I can simply login to my desktop PC @ home and work away there. I even go so far as to remote into my desktop from my notebook when im out on the balcony.

That being said a common issue which I needed to deal with was the ability to Remote Desktop into any one of the machines behind my router. In order to do so I had to configure RDT, on each computer, to use different ports.

Check out this article on how to configure Remote Desktop for a non-standard port number.

Arron Hallberg has a really interesting post on his blog on how to add a custom task to the Team Foundation Build Process. The possibilities of this type of extensibility which most areas of TFS have out of the box are truly amazing.

I have worked with a few code generation tools in the past, Wilson ORMapper, LLBLGen Pro, and now CodeSmith and immediately I thought how great it would be to automate these code generation tools into the build process. Ill probably take a stab at this very soon.

Just a reminder of a few up-and-coming webcasts.

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server HOW TO: Plan for, Install, and Configure

Thursday, November 16, 2006 2:00 PM Central Time (US & Canada)

Visual Studio 2005 and MSDN - a procurement perspective

Thursday, October 26, 2006 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Momentum Webcast: Best Practices for Source Code Management with Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server (Level 100)

Thursday, November 30, 2006 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

MSDN Webcast: Introduction to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Database (Level 200)

Monday, November 20, 2006 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Visual Studio Team System Demo

Thursday, November 02, 2006 2:00 PM Central Time (US & Canada)

Visual Studio Team System Demo

Thursday, November 30, 2006 2:00 PM Central Time (US & Canada)

Chris Birmele has written a nice paper on Branching and Merging as it relates to Team Foundation Server. Check it out here.

October 24th and 25th 2006 will go down as the most annoying days that I have had (for the better part of my software development life). Anyone who has seen this CS0433 error after converting a VS2005 website to a Web Application Project will feel my pain.

Here are the following events which had occurred:

1. A VS2005 website was created and a small number of pages, controls, sitemaps, etc were added.
2. A decision in the department was made to use the VS2005 Web Application Project for .Net 2.0 websites.
3. Our group downloaded and installed the WAP Add-In (Download Here)
4. I removed all of the VSS bindings (we are still waiting to receive our full Team Foundation Server edition)
5. I followed steps to Upgrade a VS2005 Web Site Project to VS2005 Web Application Project tutorial.
6. Everything went smoothly except that it was kind of a pain to add the namespaces to all of the source files. Nonetheless, I was happy because I was out of the horrific WebSite method of developing web applications. The application built correctly and I added to a separate project in VSS.

Everything seemed to be going great until I fired up the debugger and ran my application.

This is the error which I would stare in the face for the next 8 hours

Compilation Error

Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.
Compiler Error Message: CS0433: The type 'AgencyPro.UserControl_NavTree' exists in both 'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\3f88d5c8\5840425e\assembly\dl3\e396fa14\0b806043_51f8c601\AgencyPro.DLL' and 'c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\3f88d5c8\5840425e\App_Web_navtree.ascx.78d7338a.aftov38w.dll'

Better yet here is the actual screen so that you can have the image burned into your mind.

I did a search on Google and it turned out that tons of people had faced this similar issue. However, I was completely unable to find anything which directly gave me a fix.

Initially I thought this issue was caused for several different reasons.

1. Maybe I needed to add the default namespace to all of the files in the project? - I did this and the issue continued.
2. Maybe it was because I had the reserved directory App_Code in the project? - I removed this and the problem was still there.
3. Maybe I needed to create an entire new project and add all of the files to that again? - I did this and the issue continued.

The obvious answer was that this error was being caused by the new ASP.NET compilation methods where a dll is generated for each of the pages (so lame in my opinion), but it was all a matter of trying to figure out how to override this behavior. After searching around in the web.config documentation, I felt stumped and due to the difficulty with generating a search phase which would turn up any real answers I was lacking documentation.

At this point I was getting a little desperate and frustrated but I knew that if I created the project from scratch and added all of the files from scratch as well, then this issue would go away. In fact, the only solutions that I had found for this issue had been describing doing just this. So, I gave up, and rebuilt everything from scratch (meaning copying and pasting all of the code into brand new files) but I still had to know what the fix was.

A buddy of mine @ work (Bruce Hoang) came over to my desk and told me to check out this article at DevX. Yes! All of my questions were answered.

Solution:

1. Remove the App_Code directory from the project.
2. Change the CodeFile attribute to CodeBehind on your .aspx, .ascx, .master, etc. pages.

Main Cause

1. I followed all of the recommended steps in the VS Web Site to VS WAP conversion but now in hindsite I think that the issue was caused by the fact that my files were still ReadOnly from VSS. Therefore when I ran the conversion, it was not able to change the CodeFile attribute to the CodeBehind  attribute on all of the pages.

Above -  The Attribute that stole my time!

For an in depth article on ASP.NET 2.0 compilation and deployment issues I would recommend this as a must read.

As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I have been using Windows Live Writer to add/update my blog posts. I recently ran across a new plugin called CodeHTMLer for Live Writer. Its a great way for posting formatted source code. You can read more at Wes' Puzzling's blog.

Download the plug-in. 

Current supported languages include : C#, C++, Java, JScript, VB.Net, XML, and Powershell

Sample Source CodeHTMLer

/// <summary>
/// Summary description for Main.
/// </summary>
static void Main(string[] args)
{
  // string variable
  string myString = "myString";

  /* integer 
     variable */
  int myInt = 2;
}

I recently ran across this really interesting site called Programmable Web. The site offers information on hundreds of different Web API's ranging from Flickr, to Amazon, to Google Maps. 

On a sidenote, my personal favorite Mashup website is HousingMaps. It uses the real estate listings on CraigsList and overlays it onto a GoogleMap. The end result is a really cool way for searching for overpriced housing.

"Changes are not allowed while code is running or if the option 'Break all processes when one process breaks' is disabled. The option can be enabled in Tools, Options, Debugging."

If you're like me and you've had to work with a number of different installs of VS2005 then you have probably seen prompt before. You tend to see this annoying pop-up message while you're in debugger mode and you try and modify any of the source files. All that you will need to do is to uncheck the "Enable Edit and Continue" option in Tools > Options > Debugging > Edit and Continue.

If anyone has any more info about this issue please, please leave a comment.

There is an upcoming MSDN chat for Team System. These chats provide a great platform to ask the members of VSTS and TFS all of those insightful questions (or gripes) which you have been saving up. I joined in on the chat last month and found it to be an informative experience. I recommend it to anyone using TFS or VSTS.

The chat will take place Nov 8, 2006 from 10AM - 11AM Pacific Time

MSDN Chats

Mattias Lindberg recently posted on the advantages of VSS over Team Foundation Version Control. The main idea which Mattias was trying to get across was the fact that TFS Version Control is simply not a viable solution for developers who are running a small operation (1 to 2 developers). In order to get TFS up and running, there are several costs and requirements which make VSS a more viable, affordable option (although it may not actually be a better source control system). The hardware, software/OS costs to install TFS can be tremendous so I completely understand where the author is coming from.

Personally, I view TFS as a software process solution which integrates Version Control into the engineering process. Therefore, personal projects which may not require all of the additional TFS features (process guidance, Office Integration, TFS Build, Work Items, etc.) may benefit more from the lightweight VSS alternative. Afterall, there is a large amount of ramp-up time required just to start to get familier with all of the features (and small issues) with TFS.

Yesterday I decided to sign up for a feedburner account in hopes that I could track the number of subscribers for my blog. As a result my feed URL has changed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/KevinCastleDotNet.

CodeSmith 4.0 Beta 2 was recently released.

Below is a sample list of changes which have been made from the previous version 3.2.X.

• CodeSmith Project support (.csp files).  This replaces property sets, the custom tool and the batch format.

  • CodeSmith Projects can be run from the command line, inside MSBuild, inside CodeSmith Studio, and inside Windows Explorer.
  • Inside of Visual Studio, any outputs that are generated will automatically be added to your project.
  • If you build your project and you have the "Generate On Build" option on, your outputs will automatically be re-generated even if you generate from the command line using MSBuild.
  • Progress dialog is shown when running from Windows Explorer.
  • GUI dialogs to easily manage your project file.
  • Easily add new outputs where you select a template and specify the property values.
  • You can also specify merge settings through the GUI to enable code merging support.
• ActiveSnippet support.  This will allow you to type something like:  "tp Petshop.dbo.Orders" inside of Visual Studio and then hit the expand key (CTRL-E, CTRL-E by default) and it will expand out into a list of property getters/setters and member variables based on the fields and data types of the Orders table.
• CodeSmith Map support (.csmap files).  This feature will allow you to create dictionary style maps of things like SQL to C# data type mappings.
  • Example: <%@ Map Name="CSharpTypeAlias" src="System-CSharpAlias.csmap" Description="Maps system types to C# aliases." %> <%= CSharpTypeAlias["System.String"] %> = "string"
  • Ability to reverse the map and use the values as the map keys.  This is useful for doing reverse lookups.
  • Ability to return the key value if a corresponding map entry is not found.
  • Ability to return a default value if a corresponding map entry is not found.
  • Ability to manage maps inside CodeSmith Studio or from Windows Explorer.
• Ability to manage database schema extended property values from inside of CodeSmith Studio.
• XmlProperty support has been enhanced to handle more variations of XSD.
• Template property values are saved for templates so that each time you run them, you donb_t have to reset the values manually.
• .netTiers 2.0 templates are included in the install.
• Added csxsd.exe to allow manually creating shared XmlProperty assemblies.
• Ton of new system extended properties added to SchemaExplorer objects.
• Bunch of performance improvements here and there throughout CodeSmith.
• Bunch of bug fixes.

For further detail for Beta 1 and 2 changes please check out this entry on the CodeSmith Community Blog.

In addition, I also found these screenshots and specific feature explanations to be really insightful.

Eteinne Tremblay has created Team Foundation Server install scripts for both Dual and Single server installations. As everyone who has installed TFS knows, it is not exactly a fun process to manually install all of the prerequisites including IIS, SQL Dev + SP1, Sharpoint Services, additional service packs and then the TFS application itself. Now I wish that at this point I could comment more on how much time that this had saved me, but unfortunately all 3 of the TFS installations which I have undergone at this point have all be done manually. If this really is as easy as it sounds (dropping the installation executables in the folder and letting the scripts do the rest) then I would recommend to anyone.

Read Etienne's blog post on his v2 TFS install scripts.

Click here to read Accient Blog's post which originally had posted the updated scripts. (note: The zip download for the scripts can be found at the bottom of the weblog post)

Download the TFS Install Scripts.

Everyone in the industry understands that when it comes to interviews, we usually make a few Google searches either to get ready to GIVE an interview and also TAKE an interview. Having been on both sides of the table this last month I found a few blog posts which really helped out.

The one that stood out the most to me was this great post from Riley's Blog @ gigadotnet.com. The questions and answers provided seemed to hit on most important topics, and ultimately I think it is a great starting point for preparing for .NET interviews.