Sprint Planner Helper - Administration

February 1, 2009

OK - to get started with this project, I first needed to handle some administrative tasks. I’ve set up a CodePlex project where I will keep the source code. You can find it here: Sprint Planner Helper on CodePlex. You can apply for access to the project to get hold of the sources as they become available.

During the setup, I discovered that the Team Explorer Client used to connect to a TFS Server is actually free! You can download it here.

I also decided to keep the project completely freeware. I will avoid using any paid products to ensure that anyone can reproduce the project on their own machines.

The project is coming along. I’ve created the solution and added my product backlog. Next, I’ll be working on setting up the projects.

P.S. I also downloaded the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 release candidate, which includes...

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What to do now - Sprint Planner Helper Initialization

January 31, 2009

I’m free!!! So what do I do now. I have been talking to my colleagues that now that don’t have to do boring work with them ;) I need another project in order to stay in touch with the IT-business.

Here is the reasons for me doing this at all:

  • Have fun! - the second it’s boring or takes to much time I’ll end it. Promise
  • To learn about DDD, TDD and ASP.NET MVC. These three things has attracted a lot of my interest I would like to try them out out. Oh yeah - it will be in C#! No more VB.NET for me - thank you very much.
  • Cannot take to much time (max 1 hour a day) - as stated earlier. I am not working!
  • Document my progress here on the blog. This idea is a complete rip off from a lot of...
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Clean Code - The Pragmatic Approach

January 30, 2009

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently reading Clean Code by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. It’s a great book!

However, having a 200-page book with rules on coding can become overwhelming, especially when trying to adopt these practices within a team.

A while back, we discussed an essay by Jeff Bay called “Object Calisthenics” extensively in the Microsoft community at Avega. This essay offers a very pragmatic approach with 9 rules on how to code.

You can find a PDF version of the rules.

I found that many of the principles Uncle Bob discusses in Clean Code are naturally followed if you adhere to the rules in Object Calisthenics.

I’ll try this approach out sometime. It does seem like a bit of a tough pill to swallow when you look at the list, though.

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Last Day - New Chapter

January 30, 2009

I have come to a fork in the road of my life (that almost sounds like a poem :)).

Today is my last day on this assignment, where I’ve learned a lot. This time, I’ve delved into SOA, WCF, TFS, AOP, and build scripts, along with SCRUM.

The SCRUM part of this experience was almost a religious one. I feel like a different and better consultant after learning SCRUM, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.

The future holds six months with Albert and Elin. I will be “daddy-free” (a direct translation of “pappaledig” for all you Swedish readers). This is a wonderful benefit in Sweden where you actually receive money from the government to stay home with your kids. Amazing!

Elin is working nights right now, which means she has a lot of free time during the day. This allows us to spend...

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Create Text File on the Fly in Build Scripts

January 30, 2009

Yesterday, we made a final touch to our build script (by “we” I mean “I talked about it for five minutes, Christer did it”).

We needed to create a .bat file that installs our database for a specific version and environment. The necessary information is only known at runtime in the build script.

I remembered there was an MSBuild community task for this purpose, and Christer found the task WriteLinesToFile. He then wrote the following target to create the .bat file:

<ItemGroup> <CmdLine Include="@ECHO OFF"/> <CmdLine Include="ECHO About to install version $(BuildVersion) on environment $(DeployEnv)"/> <CmdLine Include="SET /p passw=Enter DB password for $(DeployEnv): "/> <CmdLine Include="CALL main.bat $(DeployEnv) . $(BuildVersion) %passw%"/> <CmdLine Include="PAUSE"/> </ItemGroup> <WriteLinesToFile File=

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NMock2 RemotingException ByRef value type parameter cannot be null

January 22, 2009

OK this might be the most misleading error message I’ve seen. I cannot decide on how to describe it… What this means… or what this try to … Actually this happens when one of your mocked objects is mocking a method that returns something and your mocking doesn’t return anything. Eeeh - that was quite tricky.

Got it? Here is an example:

When I mock this method:

Public Class FacadeObject       Function CreateSomeThing(ByVal aName As String) As Long      End Function End Class

by using the following code to do the mock

Expect.Once.On(m_mockadFacadeObject).Method("CreateSomeThing")

an exception of RemotingException (ByRef value type parameter cannot...

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Update AppSettings with XmlUpdate in Build Scripts

January 20, 2009

I know I will chase this one forever if I don’t put it up here…

We encountered a situation where we needed to tweak the AppSettings section of a configuration before running tests in the build script.

Luckily, there is a solution available. With the XmlUpdate task (from the MSBuild Community Tasks), you can accomplish this—if you know how to write the XPath query.

Here’s how to use it (I found this example here):

<XmlUpdate
    Namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0"
    XmlFileName="$(SourceDir)\Core\ABSuite\ABClient\App.config"
    Xpath="//configuration/appSettings/add[@key='Main.ConnectionString']/@value"
    Value="$(DatabaseConnectionString)" />

Additionally, if you need to brush up on your XPath skills, check out this XPath tutorial for some great examples.

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