Dev Env, TFS, MSBuild etc

Turning on code coverage/instrumentation in a TFS Build

Tim Huffam — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:32:14 GMT

This requires a testrunconfig file that has been configured correctly. To do this I did the following:

In VS2008, right click on Solution Items folder and select Add - New Item...
Select Test Run Configuration and enter the name WithCodeCoverage.testrunconfig.
Open/edit this file in VS.
Select the 'Code Coverage' item on the left, then selected (checked) the assemblies I wanted to instrument
Click Apply to save these changes.

Note that you can select which is the active test run configuration from under the Test menu in VS2008.

Now we need to update the TFS build...

Open your TFS build file (eg TFSBuild.proj)
In the section starting with
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- TEST ARGUMENTS...
Add the following line (after the comments and before the closing of PropertyGroup):
<RunConfigFile Condition=" '$(IsDesktopBuild)' != 'true' ">$(SolutionRoot)\DEV\Release1\Source\WithCodeCoverage.testrunconfig</RunConfigFile>
(update accordingly to suit your build server paths).

That's it. Queue a build to test - you may need to verify your server build paths to get it working (I did).

HTH
Tim

How to turn on unit testing in your TFS build

Tim Huffam — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:54:27 GMT

The following will make your builds (running on a TFS Server) execute your unit tests after the build:

Open your build file (eg TFSBuild.proj). VS2008 has a nice xml editor for this.
Search for the RunTest node and change it from:
<RunTest>false</RunTest>
to:
<RunTest>true</RunTest>
Look for a section that starts with:
<ItemGroup>
<!-- TEST ARGUMENTS ...
and add nodes within this (after the comments and before the closing of the ItemGroup node) - one entry for each unit test assembly you have eg:
<TestContainer Include="$(OutDir)\My.App.UnitTests.dll" />

Thats it - check in this file and queue a build.

An error I got while getting this working indicated that the MSTest.exe could not be found - this was because TFS Client had not been installed on the build server - once these were installed it worked fine.

Something else you may want to do is ensure that a build is triggered every time someone checks in. To do this, edit your build definition (right click on your build within Team Explorer and choose "Edit Build Definition...") - click on the 'Trigger' item in the list on the left and make sure the "Build each check-in (more builds)" item is checked.

HTH
Tim

Script to remove unchanged files in TFS/VS2008

Tim Huffam — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:31:34 GMT

TFS has a wonderful feature whereby it marks files as changed, even though there are no changes. These files show up in the Pending Changes window in Visual Studio (VS 2008).

To work around this, add the following external command to your VS tools:

First you need to install TFS Power Tools
In VS go into Tools - External Tools and click Add
Enter the following details:
Title: Unchange
Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools\tfpt.exe
Arguments: uu /recursive /noget
Initial Directory: $(SolutionDir)
And check 'Use Output Window'
Click Ok

That's it. To test, view the Pending Changes window - usually after a 'Get Latest' is when it lists unmodified files as changed - then click Tools - Unchange.

Thanks to Duncan Smith for this gem of info.

The fact they created a tool for this makes you wonder!

HTH
Tim

How to remove TFS workspaces

Tim Huffam — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:10:29 GMT

This will actually remove the your workspaces - unlike the VS/TFS Source Control Explorer which simply does not display them - duh!

From the VS command prompt:

tf workspaces /remove:*

VS 2008 crashes when running unit tests - VSPERF?

Tim Huffam — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:36:21 GMT

Sometimes Visual Studio 2008 (Team System Developer Edition - with Team Explorer and TFS Power Tools) crashes (disappearing completely) when running unit tests.

I have not yet tried SP1 for VS2008 - will hopefully try this in the next week or two.

Not really sure what causes this - but have noticed that the following error is written to the windows event log prior to the crash (not at the same time).

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VSPERF
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1406
Date:  22/08/2008
Time:  16:27:18
User:  N/A
Computer: MYPC
Description:
There was an error connecting to the Logger Engine while registering C:\Dev\DEV\Release1\Source\MyWebProject\bin\MyWebProject.dll for coverage.

Initially I thought it was a particular test or peice of target code that caused it, but found that the crash occured at seemingly random moments ie I tried running all tests and it would crash at test number 259 (out of 264), then tried running the first 100 tests and it crashed - then tried the last 20 tests and it crashed- even tried running 1 test and it crashed. This was the worst case of this problem - over the past few weeks it (VS crashing/disappearing) would only happen every now and then.

The only work around I've found is to replace or remove the workspace and start again...

If you have pending changes, shelve them first.
Using Source Control Explorer, remove the workspace.
Close the solution in VS.
Within a VS command prompt run the following command to remove all workspaces (if you have many workspaces and only want to remove the one workspace then specify it's name instead of the asterisk used below):
tf workspaces /remove:*
Use the Source Control Explorer to recreate a new workspace.
Note: if you have scripts/macros that reference your original workspace source dir, then it would pay to use the same dir - if you do, make sure you delete the contents of this dir before reassigning it to the new workspace.

HTH
Tim

Visual Studio (VS200) loosing it's source control bindings

Tim Huffam — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:08:41 GMT

VSTS2008 has, on occasion, lost it's source control settings - specifically, the bindings to TFS server for a given solution and it's projects.

This seems to be because the solution and project files are not being updated when you use the TFS Source Control Explorer to do a 'Get Latest' - a 'feature' of VS2008 which allows you to work disconnected/offline - however it seems to have an issue trying to reconnect itself.

To resolve we simply removed the local source directory and did a 'Get Specific Version - get latest'.

RickSW had a similar experience.

Tim

MSBuild fails when building solutions with database projects

Tim Huffam — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:20:16 GMT

There is a known problem with MSBuild whereby it does not cater for database project types as these project types (database projects) are not buildable. This is only an issue when specifying a solution file (as the item to build) within the MSBuild script.

Because these are not buildable projects VS does not show them in the solution configuration manager. Unfortunately this means they cannot be manually configured not to build (as a work around to this problem).

When using solution files within MSBuild, it does not allow you to exclude specific projects. There are a few options to work around this - as mentioned in this article: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=640825&SiteID=1

Another simple solution is to just remove the database project from the solution - and if you really want it still within the solution - just create another project of type class library and just reuse the original project's files. By using another project type (like class library) you can use the configuration manager to explicitly flag this project not to build (remember to update each configuration).

This issue affects TFS continuous integration builds.