CodePlex Weblog : Announcing the CodePlex Source Control Client

CodePlex listened to the community and provided a client with edit/merge/commit workflow and anonymous check-out/update much beloved of Subversion.

 CodePlex Weblog : Announcing the CodePlex Source Control Client

I’ve yet to see how much like Subversion it is, but it seems to be a step in the right direction. Especially notable given that TFS is rooted firmly in the check-out/edit/check-in mentality.

Filed under: Tools

Tip: Instead of using ‘*’, Drag the “Columns” Folder to the Query Editor Surface to List All Columns in SQL Management Studio

Just click and drag it, and a list of columns appears like this:

backup_set_id, first_family_number, first_media_number, filegroup_name, page_size, file_number, backed_up_page_count, file_type, source_file_block_size, file_size, logical_name, physical_drive, physical_name, state, state_desc, create_lsn, drop_lsn, file_guid, read_only_lsn, read_write_lsn, differential_base_lsn, differential_base_guid, backup_size, filegroup_guid, is_readonly, is_present

Filed under: Tools

SendTo Visual Studio for Debugging

Can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before…

 

More than that, I can’t believe I can’t find _anyone_ who hasn’t thought of this one…

 

Sometimes, you need to be able to grab onto an EXE before it launches with a debugger and watch everything it does for some clue of what is going wrong. I’ve been working on an interop layer from PowerBuilder to .Net via a set of unmanaged interfaces on the PB side (PBNI) and C++/CLI on the CLR side. Right before last week’s demo, the mapping application we’re building stopped working completely and unexpectedly, where the run before it was working. Turned out that it was due to me writing to the event log without a defined event source (still can’t explain why it worked in the first place). The only way I found that out is by grabbing the EXE on launch and watching where it failed, since it is a Powerbuilder app, and it doesn’t generate debug info when it creates the EXE file… and forget about using the Powerbuilder IDE to do anything. It becomes more of a basket case than the program I’m trying to debug!

 

The only way I knew how to do this is by creating a new key in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionImage File Execution Options registry key with the name of the file, and a string value with "devenv.exe /debugexe" as the data. Everytime you launched the EXE on the system, it would bring up Visual Studio instead, and you could debug the process. This worked, but it was a pain to manage the key.

 

Enter "SendTo". It is a directory in your profile (C:Documents and Settings<your user name> by default). Create a shortcut there called "Visual Studio to Debug" and make it point to ‘"C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 8Common7IDEdevenv.exe" /debugexe’. When you right click an EXE, choose this new option in the "Send To >" menu item, and Visual Studio will come up with the EXE ready to launch. Ahh… much more efficient.

Filed under: Tools

Live search finally gives me better results than Google – for once.

I’m trying to display a lot of text on a control in a Windows Installer UI (the IT wonks like to see the SQL before I brazenly connect to the database and run amok – talk about paranoia!) and am not having much luck with it. The Windows Installer UI is one of the very worst things I have had to program against, for sure. Not only is it exceedingly limiting (can’t do much in terms of dynamic display), but it often doesn’t work in the way that a Windows dev would expect. Principle of least surprise was apparently not requiste reading for the UI team here. But I cut some slack, since it’s a throwback to the relatively bad old days of 2000 – before .Net. The real shocker is that Windows Installer 4 doesn’t have a reworked UI – I mean, come on: .Net 3 is baked into the platform – of course it can be a dependency and you can base an installer UI on it! You do it with user32.dll and advapi32.dll – now mscorlib.dll and friends are just as much part of the Windows (Vista) system! These folks are apparently not sold on the idea, and perhaps really detest installer dependencies (as this fellow does). I think the argument is logically fallacious, though, in the case of Vista. If MSI 4 requires Vista (true) and Vista contains a resource (.Net, for instance, or advapi32.dll) as part of the OS (true) then the installer can depend on it (by modus ponens).

 

But this post is about another MS tentacle^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H department. Live search is quietly getting better. I looked for "windows installer license text property" to see about using a property as a source for the ScrollableText control, and Live’s first 25 results are more relevant. Good show. First time this has happened for me.

 

That actually says a lot about how good Google is, and how much longer Live’s team will have to work hard. I feel sorry for the engineers’ families.

Filed under: Tools

The INQ names a Vista feature better than Leopard

In an unusual move, the INQ points out that Vista’s "undelete" feature (based on Volume Shadow Services – a filter driver which does block-copy-on-write) is better than Apple’s OS 10.5 "Time Machine" feature.

 

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33692

 

Having worked with VSS, it is a great technology and it is about time MS capitalizes on it with a decent UI. It actually existed in XP through file shares only, and through a C++ API, but because it was so hidden, almost no one benefitted. Good to see MS using their ultimately good command of the low-level with some matching UI.

 

Although, as usual, Apple’s naming is better.

Filed under: Tools

Windows Live Toolbar Rocks

I always lamented that MSN toolbar didn’t highlight terms on the page, and wouldn’t allow you to jump to them at the click of a button. 

Google did.

Now, Windows Live Toolbar takes it to the next level…

This rocks!

Filed under: Tools