I was trolling for some help on a particularly infuriating MS Team System problem (more on that later...), and stumbled upon a site by David Findley. David's got some great stuff on this site - here's a short list of useful items that grabbed my eye during a quick sweep.
- Using IronPython for Dynamic Expressions. As an architect, it's always interesting to see unique solutions to ever-present dynamic code problems. This one's pretty slick.
- Suggestions for distributing CTPs as VirtualPC images. As you know, I'm a huge fan of VM's, so anything about virtualization catches my eye. David's got a couple really good points in here, and he also made reference to a VM utility I'd never heard of: Invirtus VM optimizer -- a tool that claims to be able to shrink VM images substantially. These guys also make a VM converter to help with P2V and V2V conversions. Pretty neat.
- Team Explorer available for FREE !?!. Of course, Team Explorer doesn't get you too much without a server, but read David's article, and you'll learn about a code-sharing site that uses Team Explorer to connect developers. Also, very cool.
- My portable thumb drive toolbox as of May 2006. A pretty good list of run-from-a-stick tools.
There's more, of course, but you'll have to go read yourself to see the whole list.
My recommendation: add this feed to your RSS reader, pronto, so you never miss another gem.
Oh, yeah - the problem I was having with Team System? Turns out you can't do unit testing on a build server that only has MS Build installed on it. Team System for Developers or Team System for Testers will do the trick, but of course, those are an arm and a leg for a license. It looks like it's possible to add just the testing capabilities using the Team System install.
I ran into this last week when I tried to get a standalone load test to run on one of our servers, and it turns out it needed all kinds of MS assemblies in order to run. I'll try fixing up our build machine for this and see whether I can get it to go. As so often seems to be the case, I feel like I'm assembling my own setup on the fly, and I'm really not sure what the licensing implications are for this.
I honestly don't understand how MS expects people to use Team System -- do they believe people are going to run their builds on the Team Server? On developers' machines? How else does it make sense that the easiest way to get a full install of build machine files is to install an IDE or Team Server???
Sigh.
David's blog was really good, though. -g-