jerryjackson.net

Thankfully, I won’t need to see this for much longer:

Whenever pair-programming with one of my co-workers, we see this one very often. I am sure their apology is sincere. My favorite part is the “No information has been lost” - when in fact we have seen plenty of instances where there WAS information lost when he couldn’t hit the CTRL-S keys quickly enough. There have been many other strange observations during my recent adventures with the .NET platform.

Soon I will be starting at a new gig where I’ll be using old familiar friends (and some new ones) like:

• Linux (no more Windows!)
• Java
• JBoss related projects such as:
  • Seam
  • Hibernate
  • Tools
  • and probably even JBoss Developer Studio
• GWT and GWT-Ext and Ext GWT
• MySQL
• Vim
• Eclipse
• Subversion or maybe I’ll use Git instead
• plus anything else I need to get the job done, which is very likely to include:
  • C++ - done properly or not at all
  • Ruby and/or JRuby
  • PHP
  • Ant, Maven, buildr as needed to automate and simplify the build/test/deploy processes.
    • while on the subject of automation, the .NET developers out there should take a look at NAnt if you’re suffering with inconsistent and error-prone building and deployment issues. There’s plenty of info on using NAnt with Visual Studio.
  • among others

Of course, this means I’ll probably start writing about the new set of challenges and problems instead of these old ones

Here’s a helpful tip for anyone new to the awesomeness of the VSS integration with VS:

This screen shot snippet from my Visual Studio Solution Explorer indicates which files have changed with the little red check mark…

The “View Pending Checkins” feature displays a nice handy listing of all those files having the red check marks indicating which files no longer match what is in the VSS repository - somewhat analogous to the ‘svn status‘ command for Subversion users - or the ‘git-status‘ command for Git users.

However, in my case, there’s a little problem: At least FOUR files I have changed are not indicated with red check marks. This makes it super-easy to lose many hours of work because you thought it all got checked back into VSS. I have witnessed this happening on a co-worker’s machine for the past several months and now I have it too. Lucky me!

With a little luck we won’t need to suffer with VSS around here for too much longer. TFS is rumored to be coming. Not sure if TFS will be a blessing or another curse - though it conjures up visions of an 800 pound gorilla tearing up the place - but what do I know? Or maybe I’ll just put up a renegade Subversion server and start using TortoiseSVN.

I could probably even sell the idea of using Git if there was a good Windows GUI and/or VS integration for it - but that hasn’t happened yet. I know it’s being worked on and I look forward to one day using Git with Visual Studio.

Here I am… getting my daily dose of .NET development work. For whatever reason, I wanted to close Visual Studio to rename and rearrange some directories on my hard drive. Then I’ll restart VS by opening a different solution file. Sounds simple enough, yes?

Actually, there WAS a reason I wanted to do this - I simply didn’t have enough sacrificial goats and chickens on hand to endure the Visual Source Safe branching process.

Here’s what my task list looks like AFTER I shut down Visual Studio:

Now here’s where it gets good!

• I have shut down VS, but devenv.exe is still there plowing away at 48 to 50 percent of my CPU.
• I also like how dexplore.exe (used for VS help) is still sitting in memory eating up 100 megs of RAM
• A directory full of files I want to rename is being locked by that devenv.exe process. At first I thought it was just IIS holding on to them as it usually does, but killing IIS didn’t help.
• The “End Process” button WILL NOT KILL devenv.exe!

I actually had to reboot the computer to kill it.

I wish it was that simple. I’m once again working in the Microsoft realm doing .NET development. I’ve seen things happen in VS2005 which I clearly do not have the capacity to understand.

I’m part of a team that’s combining parts of other products/projects into a new stand-alone baseline product for our company. All the other previously existing products will become enhancements to this new baseline product.

Needless to say, the VS Solution file has plenty of stuff in it - many projects, references, etc.

Here’s the sequence of events I just witnessed while attempting to get a clean build after my last half-hour of code exorcism (removing all traces of the original products from this new one so it can truly stand alone without dependency on the others):

• clean
• rebuild
• clean
• rebuild (don’t ask me why I’m starting to think this multi-rebuild process is “normal”)
• lots of errors
• clean
• rebuild
• fewer errors
• clean
• rebuild
• fewer errors
• clean
• rebuild
• more errors
• wait and watch the “live” errors list (VS2005 is apparently doing something behind the scenes here)
• wait some more (I was actually distracted doing something else when my peripheral vision picked up the changing errors listing)
• errors start disappearing off the list
• finally they’re gone
• can it be? do I really have a clean build?
• clean
• rebuild
• more errors
• clean
• rebuild
• NO ERRORS (but I don’t really believe it)
• clean
• rebuild
• no errors
• again
• no errors(now I believe it - sort of)
• QUICK - check it all in to VSS
• spend the next 5 minutes trying to make the voices stop

It should be noted that at no point during that sequence was any file edited or saved!

Looking forward to deploying this monster….