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24.03.08
Installing Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Server 2008
Today I’ve had a hard time installing Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Server 2008. I finally wanted to test WCF hosting within WAS.
The installation broke several times with Error 1330:
"… d:\cab11.cab has an invalid digital signature …"
I tried copying the installation files to HDD, another installation media, mounting the ISO image - all to no avail.
Finally I found a blog post on the issue by Heath Stewart. Within the comments to his post he recommends to
check your performance settings, to see if the failed machines are set for Background Service Optimization? Also, are these Win2K3 machines or what platform are they?
On Vista: "Start"->Right click on Computer, select Properties. On the left, select "Advanced System Properties", click "Settings" under "Performance", then click the "Advanced" tab. Is "Programs" or "Background services" checked.
I switched the performance settings to "Programs" and also defragmented the target disk with the build-in defragmenter. Afterwards the installation ran perfectly fine.
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 22:07 | Comments (1) | TrackBack
29.01.08
Visual Studio 2008 Tip: Resolving Namespaces and Removing Unused Using Statements
For quite some time I’ve been wondering why Visual Studio still doesn’t meet the minimal requirements of development productivity. Features such as resolving namespaces, finding classes and automatically resolving namespaces and navigating to the definition of a class by simply pressing STRG and clicking the left mouse button, which are offered by about every JAVA IDE, are missing. Instead Visual Studio 2008 presents #1001 of the most annoying wizards ever.
ReSharper comes to the rescue, but it doesn’t support C# 3.0, yet. David Hayden shows how to get along with Visual Studio 2008 regarding namespaces:
It turns out, Visual Studio 2008 actually has good support for resolving namespaces and optmizing using statements that can get you the functionality if you are not using ReSharper.
[…]
Pressing Ctrl + . will bring up a context-sensitive menu that allows you to add a using statement or optionally fully qualify the path to the class.
[…]
The other nice thing that ReSharper does is remove unused using statements using Ctrl+Alt+O.
We can get that using Visual Studio 2008, because you may have noticed the cool context-sensitive Organize Usings Option:
[…]
I’ve quit hoping for something like “Call Hierarchy” within Visual Studio or at least ReSharper, but David’s tip saved me from uninstalling VS 2008.
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 21:08 | Comments (1)
24.09.07
MSBuild vs. NAnt
Tomas Restrepo has posted a nice comparison of MSBuild and NAnt. Although I’ve been using MSBuild for a long time, I’m thinking of giving NAnt a try. MSBuild is missing some useful tasks, especially concerning deployment of web applications and configuring IIS. Community tasks are available, but they are very often lacking properties in order to customize the tasks to my requirements/likings:
My recent efforts of migrating a web application from WebForms to MonoRail might have influenced my decision to have a look at NAnt (Castle is build by an NAnt script).
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 13:55
02.08.07
GTD@Outlook with Jello.Dashboard
I’ve been looking for an efficient way of organizing tasks, contacts and mails in Microsoft Outlook for some time. After using Jello.Dashboard for more than 3 months, I think I’ve found what I was looking for.
Jello.Dashboard is a Homepage for Outlook that adds GTD like functionality at no cost. Go and have a look for yourself.
The only thing I missed from Jello.Dashboard was a keyboard shortcut for activating the Outlook Homepage (the Dashboard). After searching the Internet (Outlook Help didn’t help at all) I came upon KC Lemson’s blog and her post “Outlook 2003 tip o’ the day”. She explains how to customize the Outlook toolbar, add a clickable action, and assign a keyboard shortcut.
So I added the “Outlook Today” action from the “Advanced” group, changed the icon to “Text only (always)” (context menu), and finally assigned a shortcut by renaming the icon/action in the context menu. I ‘ve chosen Alt-q. Why? I renamed the action to “inno&q Today”. The “&” does the work of assigning an Alt-Key-Combination to a character with the action’s name. The choice of “q” is obvious for two reasons: a) “innoQ” and b) Alt-q is easily accessible.
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 16:43
08.03.07
Jeremy D. Miller - Do you use OSS tools for .Net development?
Jeremy Miller started an informal poll asking “Do you use OSS tools for .Net development?”.
Does your workplace routinely employ Open Source tools for software development with .Net? If not, why not? Based on experience, I can probably make some guesses, but I’d still prefer to hear it from you.
- OSS isn’t supported
- Untrustworthy quality
- Company policy
- Don’t know the alternatives
- We only use Microsoft tools
I’m very interested in this question, too. I’ve got a strong Java background and have been using OSS tools very often. The experiences have been good and bad. Today I’m mainly using the .NET editions of the most famous Java OSS tools:
- NUnit, though mbUnit is surely worth a look
- Log4Net
- NHibernate
- Ankh, TortoiseSVN and Subversion
Compared to my Java projects this is a very small set. At the moment I’m playing with
Until now I’m very pleased with the tools we’re using. Thus I’m recommending them to you!
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 12:14 | TrackBack
11.09.06
Scott Hanselman's 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Scott Hanselman did it again. His 2006 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows really enlists the most powerful and useful tools available for Windows today.
I only wonder why ReSharper seems to get a rather low score on his list. Frankly I don’t know CodeRush, but when comparing the navigation features advertised on the CodeRush site with the features offered by ReSharper, ReSharper clearly wins. Besides, these features are standard features within almost any Java IDE. I can’t understand why such essential features are missing in Visual Studio 2005.
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 17:20
22.08.06
Windows Live Writer (beta) Test
This is just a test of the Windows Live Writer (beta) features on a Movable Type blog engine:
This is a bullet list:
- First
This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. This is a paragraph belonging to a bullet. - Second
- Third
This is an ordered list:
- First
This is a paragraph belonging to an item within an ordered list. This is a paragraph belonging to an item within an ordered list. This is a paragraph belonging to an item within an ordered list. This is a paragraph belonging to an item within an ordered list. This is a paragraph belonging to an item within an ordered list. - Second
- Third
Playing with fonts and formatting.
This is a
quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote,
quote, quote, quote, quote, quote,
Let’s see how it works out …
Quite nice, very nice. Download Windows Live Writer here. Recommended!
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 12:21 | Comments (2)