Adventures of Wannabe Geek

TeamCitySharp now builds with Mono

public@paulstack.co.uk — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:46:00 +0100

I am pleased to be able to say that TeamCitySharp is now supports mono. In order to get the project supported I had to change a few parts of the system.

Up until now, each project within the solution has a “BeforeBuild” event that downloaded the nuget packages needed to build the solution. This was in place to keep the github repository small enough to facilitate a fast download for people who fork it. Nuget doesn’t work with mono so there was a trade off I had to make. In this instance I chose supporting mono over the “BeforeBuild” event. This does mean that once the repository is cloned or forked. then it will work instantly. I hope to revisit this if / when someone manages to get nuget working with mono.

The sample build monitor was a standard ASP.NET MVC 3 project. I found that this didn’t build with mono out of the box. It was throwing errors due to the references contained. The following references were present:

On running a reference analysis, I was able to see that the following references were not used:

This meant that only the core references were left behind. This meant that the entire solution was able to build under mono.

In order to build the project with mono, you can run the following command:
xbuild TeamCitySharp.sln

Installing Mono on Windows

public@paulstack.co.uk — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0100

I have recently been thinking about making TeamCitySharp supported on mono. This would require me to either run a VM (that you can download form the mono project site) or install mono on Windows. As I would continue to develop TeamCitySharp in VS2010, I thought it would be better to install mono on windows.

When trying to install mono, I went to the mono project download page and was presented with 3 options for windows:

I had no idea what to install & tweeted to that effect. Almost immediately, Rob Reynolds tweeted this back:

cinst mono

This is a reference to chocolatey which I have used before. Chocolatey is described as “apt-get for windows”. In order to install mono I had a number of steps to follow:

1. Set the execution policy of PowerShell to unrestricted

2. Install chocolatey

3. cinst mono

which, when downloaded triggers the install

Mono is now installed and ready to be used. This was extremely easy using chocolatey. I have used it before to install nodejs but I have to admit I didn't really pay attention to what packages it contained. I will be doing so from now on. If you have not checked out chocolatey then please do so – it rocks!

How Nuget could improve

public@paulstack.co.uk — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:45:00 +0100

Late in December 2011, I stuck my oar into a conversation on twitter (as I usually do) between Scott Koon, David Ebbo, Sumit Maitra and Eric Ridgeway. This conversation was about why Nuget.org was not the best place for a Northwind DB Sample package. My comment was as follows:

@lazycoder @davidebbo @sumitkm @Ang3lFir3 maybe have the ability for codeplex to have a nuget style feed of its own for sample libraries?

I thought I should clarify my thoughts further. Nuget (and OpenWrap) have set the .net world into a new era for dependency management but there are not many enforced rules or moderation of the packages you can upload. For example, I maintain the NUnit package. This means I submit updates to the package when a new version is released by NUnit. I once received a comment on how I should split the package up into just a dll package and then have a full package.I really had to think hard about why I should do this. Who am I to change the way the guys who create NUnit distribute the package. All I do is to get the contents of their .zip and redistribute that – and I do struggle to think how I have the authority to do that sometimes. This led me to a very prudent question:

Is Nuget.org a site that should have strict regulations about the packages that get uploaded there?

I have heard about a few broken packages and actually sample applications. Is this the correct place for these packages to go to?Has it become a dumping ground for software. Sites like codeplex, github and bitbucket are used more frequently for source control. Are these sites the correct areas for the sample applications? I would argue yes. I feel that Nuget should contain only packages that I can download and use immediately. I don’t want to have to download a 12mb sample application when I could view the source in github or codeplex. Maybe a way to take this further would be to set up the ability for nuget to hook into these types of systems:

nuget install-sample <path to codeplex>

This would keep the nuget library free of the packages not deemed useful. Who can classify a package as useful in this theory I hear you say? Well the users of the site, via a stackoverflow style voting system. A broken package gets a downvote, then any packages below –4 (for example) would get archived by the system and the package owner to get notified. There would have to be some sort of moderation of this though or people with rival packages could eliminate the competition

I do believe that uploads to the nuget library should be regulated. There are more than enough people in the .net community that would spend a few minutes a day clearing out / verifying packages. If we regulate the packages then developers will continue to use for nuget. If it continues with the following types of packages then this may not be the case:

The naming conventions of these packages contain the letters ‘–ci’. How on earth can I work out what the different between MvcContrib.MVC3-ci is? Is it a special kind of package for CI use only or was it built with a CI system? This is exactly the issue. Some kind of visual check around this would have stopped – for the record I actually installed MvcContrib before I realised it was not compatible with MVC3 – this should have been noted in the description, in my opinion.

I enjoy using nuget and I really want to continue enjoying it. All we (as a community) need to do is to be respectful of other developers when we create a package. When delivering software to paying customers, do we release potentially untested applications or do we make sure that they work?

$0.02

CodeMash 2012–what an awesome event!

public@paulstack.co.uk — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0100

This past weekend (January 10th – 14th 2012) CodeMash was held in the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, OH. Yes I know – Ohio in January!! I had been warned that firstly its cold there and secondly there is usually a lot of snow. This time we were quite lucky and only got a little snow. I arrived on Wednesday night after a very long journey and walked into what was just a hive of activity. I have been to a lot of conferences, this one was not only huge but very interactive and social. A lot of the attendees brought their families for the week!

I was very lucky to have a session accepted for this conference (Introducing Continuous Delivery) and was extremely pleased to know that my session had made it from over 700 applications. I was also lucky enough to have my session early on Thursday. If you look at the schedule, marvel at the level of speakers here and you will see why I was so pleased!

The big thing for me on this conference is that there were a lot of companies there in force. Edgecase and Leandog are the 2 that stick out for me. Edgecase as they were usually in the hot tub drinking and leandog because of those hats . There was also the small matter of a party on Thursday evening after the sessions that actually moved to take over the waterpark between 10pm and 1am. A-Maze-ing! I, in fact, did ‘a Corey Haines’ and smashed my head off the bottom of the pool. At one point on the Friday, Cleveland were trying to get me to stand on the runway as a beacon for the planes to find the runway as it was so red!

a Corey Haines :

To injure oneself at CodeMash in the waterpark
OMG Dude you just did a Corey Haines – are you ok?

Oh and the bacon bar – bacon with all sorts of toppings available – from butterscotch to white chocolate.

Without the sponsors this event would never have been able to happen. Please do say a thank you – tweet them even! I seen tweets as to the magnitude of the event:

Just picked up cashier's check to Kalahari for partial conference payment: $330,000. Nice double-take from the cashier when I said amount

Most importantly, I would sincerely like to thank all the organisers. These guys work on this conference while holding down jobs. Its an incredible accomplishment. It was what I would certainly class as the best conference ever. Thinking of 1300 geeks in a waterpark in Ohio in January doesn’t do this event justice at all. It is quite literally a software conference for the entire family.

I met so many cool people – I couldn't begin to name them all or acknowledge them all! I will certainly be back next year! For now I will have to get over the bacon sweats, keep icing my head from my stupidity and start working on my submission next year!

2011 – My Year in Review

public@paulstack.co.uk — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:01:00 +0100

2011 was an excellent year for me. Unfortunately I didn’t see the point in setting myself clear personal goals for it. But here is my retrospective of my personal work. This post does not include anything that happened at work or in my personal life. 2011 was the year:

1. I started speaking at user groups / events
In total I spoke at 26 events. This included some bigger events (DDD) in Reading. Scotland, Bristol and Sunderland as well as a lot of user group events all around the country. Unfortunately, 2 had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances but I will make it up to those groups in 2012.

2. I was made a Jetbrains Academy Member
I still cannot believe this happened and I am honoured at being involved with it. I hope to be part of some big things with this academy and I look forward to continuing to be part of it in 2012. You can read more about this program on the Jetbrains site.

3. I helped organise GiveCamp UK
Even now, almost 3 months after the event, I am still on a high about this. It was certainly something I can look back on in my career and be really proud to have been part of such a fantastic weekend. More information on GiveCamp and a chance to sign up for the 2012 event can be done on the GiveCamp UK site.

4. I was Technical Reviewing books
I was part of the reviewing effort of MVC3 In Action and HTML5 for the .Net Developer both by Manning Books. For those who know me, I can be quite opinionated and this was a great opportunity for me to take those opinions in order to help shape a book.

5. I was accepted as a Friend of Redgate
Redgate run a program that helps bring together some well known community members and MVPs in order to help give feedback on their products. This was another great opportunity for me to use my opinions and experience in order to help evaluate the products developers use on a daily basis. You can read more about this program on the Redgate site.

6. I started my first real OSS project – TeamCitySharp
As an avid TeamCity user, this was a project that I really enjoyed writing. IT is now approaching 100 downloads from Nuget.org, 27 watchers, 7 forks and 11 pull requests on github. I am very happy with it. You can find the project on my github repository.

What does 2012 hold for me?

I’m honestly not too sure what 2012 has in store for me. 2011 was such a fantastic year that I am not sure I can top it. Bit it does give me the opportunity to speak at 2 international events. Codemash and Software Passion Summit. Hopefully there will be more well known events that I can submit sessions and speak at but there are so many fantastic speakers that I have to be on top of my game.

I hope 2012 is half as good a year for me as 2011! I look forward to it……

Features Nuget Would Benefit From

public@paulstack.co.uk — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:02:00 +0100

I look to Nuget as the package manager for Windows development in the same way that RubyGems is to Ruby development. This may be immature of me but it works for my scenarios. In comparing the different systems, I feel that Nuget is lacking a few key features that sometimes I look for.

1. Install a specific version of a package

Currently from the Nuget console in Visual Studio a command like the following is run:

Install-package TeamCitySharp

This would install the latest package available. This is sometimes not always the best solution. If the package owner releases a package that has a bug in it then we cannot use the package at all. I would like the be able to install a version of the package that I know works:

Install-package TeamCitySharp –version:0.2

This would mean I can then update at a time when I am happy with the new package or when a fix has been added.

2. Download package direct from the Nuget gallery

I may want to download package without the need to open the Nuget console. A simple download link would be a welcome addition to be able to help this.

3. Global installation of a package

Currently, you would select the project from the list in the console and then call the install command. I would like to be able able install a package to a number of packages. For example, I have 20 unit test assemblies. I wouldn't want to have to type the command to install NUnit 20 times. I would like to be able to do something like:

Install-package NUnit -include *.UnitTest.dll –exclude *.config

This would utilise the full power of the PowerShell console. This is purely a timesaver and would help when working in a multi project environment.

Memory Management In .Net–Story Board

public@paulstack.co.uk — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:39:00 +0100

During a work trip, I was prompted to get back into recalling how memory management in .net works as my company found a bit of an issue when they migrated their codebase from .net 3.5 to .net 4.

Lots of searching on Google and reading of MSDN documentation helped me get back to speed on what I knew before and then I found an email from Redgate in my inbox. Those awesome folk have created a simple storyboard of how it works to make it easy to understand. This has been sent to all the developers on my team as this is a great resource.

I strongly suggest checking this resource out: Memory Management in .Net

TeamCitySharp v0.2

public@paulstack.co.uk — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:40:00 +0100

Hot on the heels of the first release of TeamCitySharp, a new update has been released for the project to nuget. There were 2 major additions to the project both contributed via pull requests on Github.

Introduction of Build Locator

This makes the protocol for obtaining build information easier as we use the locator in the url rather than trying to build a query string manually. Previously we built a query string as follows:

http://myserver.com/httpAuth/app/rest/buildTypes/id:bt437/builds?status=SUCCESS

This would get the successful builds for build config id 437. This has now been replaced by the following query string:

http://myserver.com/httpAuth/app/rest/builds?locator=buildType:id:bt437,status:SUCCESS

Thanks must go to Simon Bartlett for this addition to the codebase. The existing methods will work in this way as the code behind the public methods has been changed to us the build locator pattern. Therefore you can still call the method:

Behind the scenes TeamCitySharp does the following call:

New Sample Build Monitor

There is now a new project included in the source code. This project is a sample implementation of a build monitor using TeamCitySharp based on MVC3 and Knockout.js. Thanks to Barry Mooring for contributing this sample to the project.

In order to use the build monitor you just need to go to the settings file and add the TeamCity url, username and password.

This gives a look and feel as follows:

You can download the source from Github or via nuget (install-package TeamCitySharp). Please feel free to leave feedback about what you feel it is lacking or what you don’t like about the project. This library will only be able to get better through help from users.

TeamCity Pricing Model Discussion

public@paulstack.co.uk — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:23:00 +0100

I have heard people talking for a while on the TeamCity pricing strategy and thought I’d write a post to start to get some opinions on what you think it should be changed to.

TeamCity users are very lucky that we have a free, without restriction, version of the software to use. It comes with 20 build configurations and 3 build agents. Unfortunately, people still do not find this adequate for their needs. The enterprise version has unlimited build configurations and 3 build agents and is approx. £1600. So the question here is:

What do you think the pricing model of TeamCity should be?

If we can get good feedback, we can give this to Jetbrains in order to let them see what their customers feel they need. This post, or discussion, does not in any way guarantee that the pricing of the tool will change.

I have heard the following suggestions:

- Make the enterprise version come with 5 build agents
- Have a version between Free and Enterprise that allows like 70 build configurations
- Give the ability to buy package extras e.g. 20 build configurations for $500 etc.

What do you think? Comments required please!

TeamCitySharp

public@paulstack.co.uk — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:05:00 +0100

TeamCitySharp (TCS) is a simple .net wrapper that will let you interact with a TeamCity server providing you have a login for that system. TeamCity has a REST API but this wrapper will help simplify the calls that that API and deserialize the response for the server into POCOs for you.

In order to get a list of projects on a TeamCity server you would make the request to the following URL:

http://<serverurl>/httpAuth/app/rest/projects

In order to interact with this, you could use EasyHTTP or HTTP WebRequest. You would set up a connection, specify a content type, give user credentials and then get a response back that you can use. TeamCitySharp has taken care of this for you. The corresponding code to make the same code using TeamCitySharp would be as follows:

There are a number of methods available that will let you get projects, build status’, build types, users, agents, user groups and server information. The project cannot be used to create projects or build types. This is due to the absence of the appropriate calls on the TeamCity REST API. A full list of functionality of the TeamCitySharp API calls can be found in the documentation.

I have created a TeamCitySharp nuget package and you can install that from nuget command line using the comment:

install-package TeamCitySharp

This is very much an early version of the project in order to get user feedback. If you do try it then please do let me know what you don’t like about it and what you feel it would benefit from. Thanks really must go to Hadi Hariri for the idea after I saw YouTrackSharp.

Please feel free to fork the project and send any requests back you feel the project would benefit from. The project is distributed under the MIT license so please adhere to this when using it.