So, first i’ll go over the general overview of what needs [...]]]> I’m not sure exactly how many people do this, but it seems like there isn’t much documentation out there on how to do this exactly. So after lots of trial and error I’ve finally gotten dll replication to work for our TFS environment.

So, first i’ll go over the general overview of what needs to be done to enable TFS to replicate files during a build. Just a reminder, this is for TFS 2010, not any previous version of TFS.

1) You’ll need a custom build template
2) You’ll need a custom TFS Activity

Second, I’ll let you know i basically followed the tutorials by Ewald Hofman and then modified things to work the way I needed them to.

So our scenario is that we have multiple products that use dll’s from a core product. When that core product gets changed, we don’t want to have to copy the dll’s manually from the build location to the locations needed by the other products. Each one of our products have a folder called SharedBinaries, this is where those dll’s live.

Now the question is, how do we do this? If you’re using TFS 2008 or 2005, you can easily just acquire TFS Dependency Replicator, it will handle all that for you. For TFS 2010 however, this doesn’t work anymore. Or more precisely, I was unable to get it to work. So, time to learn how to use Windows Workflow. At first this seems very daunting, but after you take it a bit at a time, things start to make sense.

I would highly recommend you take a look at the tutorials i mentioned earlier, they will give you a good base to work from. And if i were to go through and document the whole process here, i would feel like i’m plagiarizing someone else’s work. Go at least as far as Part 4 – Creating your own activity, this is where i’ll start my documentation.

I created a new Code Activity and called it ‘ReplicateFiles.cs’.  You can download it here.

You’ll want to add three Arguments to your custom template.

In the Metadata Argument, you’ll want to add those three Arguments as required fields.

In the custom template, I added the custom activity just before the gated check-in process.

Lastly, you’ll want to add the three Arguments into the appropriate fields on the custom activity properties, as well as specifying the BinariesDirectory as the SourceLocation to copy the files from.

While setting up your build, you’ll want to make sure you fill out those newly required fields in Build Editor Process Section.

Before you go wild and start running builds, go through this checklist.

• Does your build controller know the path to the custom binaries you’ve made (for the custom build activity).  (reference)
• Have you checked in the latest version of your custom template, as well as the custom activity dll

• The required arguments in the ReplicateFiles.cs are what you pass into the class from the custom template you’ve created, make sure those are filled out in the build template.
• Make sure you have the correct path to your TFS server for tfsName in ReplicateFiles.cs.
• Make sure that the user you run your build service under has file system permissions for the location where you want to create your temporary workspaces.
• I had this issue, and it almost drove me nuts! I kept getting access denied errors when trying to overwrite the files in the target branches. Make sure that the files being replicated ARE NOT checked out and locked!

If you have any corrections, feedback, or ideas! Please comment and let me know!

What if [...]]]> A few days ago my roommate got a box of random electronic parts donated to him. Most of the stuff was junk, only good to salvage parts off of. But there were two items that we did find of interest. Two motherboards that seemed like they were still in pretty good condition.

What if we could get them up and running again?

And so our weekend project was started!

First we got an old power supply and some old RAM we had laying around and plugged everything up to see if it would even turn on. That turned out to be a bit more trouble than we initially thought we’d have. Sean searched the internet for the manual to the motherboard and we found the pins that the power button was to plug up to. One small problem, we didn’t have a power button. So while Sean got something together, we used a set of hemostats to bridge the pins and power on the pile of parts. Something was wrong though, the monitor we had hooked up to it didn’t show anything. and since we didn’t have a PC speaker, we couldn’t hear beep codes. We almost resorted to the ancient art of poke-at-it-with-a-screwdriver when i noticed a jumper in between the two RAM banks. I pulled it out and tried the power and BAM! POST! By this time Sean had gotten a power button and a light soldered together for us to use. Now we needed some sort of boot up medium, and we decided that a USB drive would be optimal. We got a 2GB drive from Walmart and loaded it up with Lubuntu.

After tweaking the BIOS settings a bit we finally were able to boot off the USB drive and get to the boot menu for the drive. On our first attempt to boot from the drive we got a kernel panic so we decided to test the RAM. That ended up being a good idea, since we discovered all of our extra DDR RAM was bad. Into the trash with that stuff! Luckily there was a second bank of RAM slots on the motherboard which supported SDRAM, an older format of RAM.

Sean pulled out the motherboard for one of his first computers, Jenny, and luckily it still had RAM in it’s banks! Thank god for hording computer parts We pulled out two of the ram sticks and tested them. They were good to go! We booted up and tada! We got a loading screen. It seemed to take forever to load, then we noticed we’d forgotten to put in the second chip of RAM, whoops :3

Now we’re in the process of updating the Ubuntu core and then we’re going to see if we can get some sort of clustering up and running. It would be neat to get a farm up and running.

There are more pictures on my flickr account

//Work

First up is work. Things [...]]]> So, yeah, i know.. it’s been a while. It’s been a combination of things that have kept me from posting anything; mainly laziness i think. But i have my laptop at work today, and it’s lunch time, so i figured.. why the hell not? It’s about f-ing time.

//Work

First up is work. Things have been going great! I’m still learning more than my brain can handle every day and I’ve been put on a multitude of projects. Well, one project but a bunch of tasks. The issues i thought i was going to have for a while, like understanding how everything is layered and how they like to structure things have come and gone. I’m really starting to understand the bigger picture of how everything works together.  Things are picking up now though, there are release dates that have to be hit, and code that needs to be pushed. And there’s a new guy. He seems pretty cool, and seems to know his stuff. And most of all, has replaced both Zach and I as the new guy. Though we’re still noobs.

//Eve

I’ve become re-addicted to Eve. I know, i seem to say that a lot. But this time does seem a little different. ONYX Heavy Industries has a good bunch of people in it, and I enjoy hanging out with them while online. Heck, there have been a few time when i wouldn’t even be in game, and i’d just be doing my thing (programming or whatever) and chat on teamspeak.

//Development

Speaking of development, that bug has bitten again too. I’ve been working on this http://www.blackmesacorp.com/eveCharCheck. It’s going to become a site that allows directors in corporations to check character’s Limited API keys and see if they can really do all the things they claim (based on the skills and certificates they have). There is currently only very limited functionality, but i hope to expand on it soon once i figure out some major bugs. Something between the ale Eve API libraries and my database libraries is colliding.. and i’m not sure why it’s doing that.

//Social gatherings

I’ve been hanging out too. Not as much as i used to, but i think that’s good too. Sometimes i just want to be alone at my house.  I went and saw The Crazies the other weekend. It wasn’t a bad flick for a horror/thriller/action-ish movie.

//New computer parts

I bought a new monitor the other day, it’s wicked. I am now rocking two 22″ LCD monitors! So much desktop space! They’re Acer x223w‘s and they’re fabulous!

Let’s start back on Friday. I really didn’t do much, mainly read, nap, play video games, mow the lawn, drink beers. Speaking of the lawn.. a few days earlier we’d put down some weed killer and it seems to be working. Now [...]]]> I’m not a dad, oh no sir. But my dad is

Let’s start back on Friday. I really didn’t do much, mainly read, nap, play video games, mow the lawn, drink beers. Speaking of the lawn.. a few days earlier we’d put down some weed killer and it seems to be working. Now all that needs to be done is get the lawn feed out and get that grass back to being the dominant plant in the yard. I’m serious, half the lawn is brown with dead weeds atm!  Anyway, back to the weekend.. I got a call from Michelle! It was the first day they were allowed to use the phone, so that was pretty exciting Friday night i went out with some friends. First we went to BW3′s for dinner, which was delish and then to some bar in Louisville, The Electric Cowboy or some such. It was ‘eh’.. Not really my scene. Lots of cowboy hats and older people and yeah well you should get the picture.  I left pretty early, it was only midnight i think, and went home.

Saturday we had our weekly SoNotSoft meeting. We talked about what kind of moves we want in our game and tried really hard to come up with a lengthly list. There’s only so much you can do with a pencil i guess. After the meeting Josh came over and we played Counter-Strike, we both suck horribly and soon decided that food was more important than video games. We ended up going to Kanzai in E-town. Man i love sushi! The Thai Chilli Roll was exquisit! I was invited to go to a River Bats game with Sarah, but to be honest I didn’t feel like driving all the way back up to Louisville. So I went back home and played some video games and took a nap.

Sunday I was up early and hit Walmart first thing. I’d heard that ammunition supplies were low (besides every gun owner always saying ammo is low). It was true, there were only 4 boxes of .40 S&W left. I bought three of them. I got back to the house and got out my pistol and made sure that it was clean and not covered in rust My dad came over around 12:30 and showed me his new rifle. A sweet M1903. We headed out and got to Knob Creek Gun Range around 1.  I fired a few magazines of ammo through my pistol (Springfield XD-40) and then tried my dad’s new rifle. Man does that thing kick! After only 5 rounds my shoulder was pretty beaten up.. After i found out later because i wasn’t holding it quite right So now i have a nicely bruised shoulder. After we’d finished we went back to my place to clean our weapons and eat some food. Sean started up the grill and put burgers on. Things took too long i guess, so dad left, since he still had to go take the dogs on a walk. And then Kristina came over and kidnapped Sean for dinner. So i was there with a grill full of burgers. There’s no way i could eat them all Instead i played some Eve. We were trying to run some wormhole plexes.. we didn’t do too well. Apoll0s lost his domi and Scab lost his apoc. I got a bit frustrated and logged pretty much right after that. I went back to reading a new book (Relentless) for a few hours before i went to bed.

Now it’s back to work for a few days before the next weekend, which will be pretty busy too. Family is coming in starting on Thursday for the family reunion my dad is hosting this year. Saturday we get a tour of the Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown.

In the meantime though, i’ll talk about other things; like the garden. The plants are growing, ever so slowly, and [...]]]> I was hoping to make my new post from my newly re-cased computer and talk about how awesome my new case was.. but nay, I haven’t gotten it yet. Hopefully it’ll be here tomorrow.

In the meantime though, i’ll talk about other things; like the garden. The plants are growing, ever so slowly, and i think there are some blossoms for the corn and peppers; which is very exciting.

I also got some new books; impulse buys really. T-Minus and Hackers. I already finished T-Minus, it wasn’t a very long read. Plus the pictures were nice Hackers on the other hand is a bit longers, and not as exciting (for me anyway), though it is very informative and interesting. I’ll keep plugging away at that one for sure.

blah.. I’d really hoped to be able to talk about my new case.