ALT.NET manage software teams 101 with SvnManager Post Create Script and Zend Framework

As a custom software development vendor in Dallas, Texas, we end up with several projects at a time. The faster we can build the team, and the various stages of development, the more responsive we can be to the client. These stages include creating the initial repository to centralize client code with correct security rights, and setting up the TeamCity build environment to push out to various environments for dev, test, staging, UAT, and production, Our automation scripts play a vital role in making our software shop successful, by removing headaches, improving response rates, freeing up time for vital members of the team, and providing consistency across projects.

Dallas CSharp SIG - MSBuild Fundamentals

On 8/5/2010, Leblanc presented "MSBuild Fundamentals" at the Dallas C# Sig. If you are interested in seeing the video, Shawn Weisfeld has captured and archived it on his blog and blip.tv. This post reiterates what was discussed in the video, and gives you a better format for quick reference scanning.

Configuration in Silverlight

ConfigurationManager, the commonly used .NET configuration API, is unavailable in Silverlight applications. The minimum code option is to deserialize an XML configuration file, or to read from initParams.

UT Dallas .Net User Group - Introduction to Silverlight

I have recently had the opportunity to speak at the UTDallas .Net User Group. The "Introduction to Silverlight Training" was a very enjoyable 3 hour session on Saturday, July 17, 2010. It was organized by UTDallas User group for the officers. The officer's goal was to set up a machine environment, and to complete a Silverlight application for people with no background in Silverlight.

Making the case for an XamlViewEngine

What does a view engine need to meet today's demands for an effective user interface?

Unit test runner in bash for C and CPP libraries

Since I need to support C and C++ versions of the tests, I have decided to use a consistent interface/script, and build a bash script to compile every unit test into its own program. The program's exit code determines a pass or fail. Should the program fail, a standard error will be displayed. Should the program pass, a different text will appear on the screen, as long as the verbose flag has been activated.

Using Isolated Storage in Silverlight with a Generic Repository

Isolated storage is a file system. It is "isolated" because it is rooted to a specific directory, which provides the sandbox needed for browser security.

Web.Config Transformations in VS2010 vs FlexibleConfig.FlexibleConfigTask

If you do not know what Web.Config Transformations are, please take a look at Chris Koenig's "Hot Do I" video series on the subject.

One of the problems that I see with these types of transformations is that they are highly dependent on "Solution Configurations". Since we have 3 environments/DevEnvironments to support, i.e. integration, regression, and uat, 3 solution configurations had to be created with 3 transformation files. Even using small teams, a DevId had to be supported in a connectionString section, in-case the team is distributed (not collocated).

Whilst working in Silverlight or WPF, it is quite common to have a developer work on UI using mocked services; whilst another developer ties the data services layer with the concrete service versions. A DevTask also needs to be considered in the build, to support this configuration.

Should the Solution Configurations approach be taken to support DevId, DevEnvironment, DevTask, and/or DevBranch, it would quickly become unmanageable with Web.config Transformations, as too many extra files would be needed.

Automatically generate the table of contents with jQuery

A few years ago, I wrote a table of contents generator in PHP for my development blog.

I am also using it for this site, which has been written in C# ASP.NET MVC. Rather than rebuilding a server side implementation, and considering that client side programming has been simplified with jQuery, I have decided to rebuild the script using jQuery. This allows anyone to add it to their page, regardless of their back-end language.

MSBuild FlexibleConfigTask

A few months ago, we concentrated on a technical debt feature, so that we could improve our team’s development work flow. Our work became an MSBuild task & FlexibleConfig.FlexibleConfigTask, and this solved a lot of issues that used to bother developers.

This feature became high priority as a result. If you are suffering from similar problems, then you are welcome to purchase this feature though our products page.