TFS 2008 to 2010 migration

I'll be migrating my TFS 2008 server (32bit) to TFS2010 (64bit) soon. I'll have to completely reinstall the machine, so this is my reading so far:

Restoring DBs to different server

Migration process

Testing migration process

TFS Power Tools

Hidden workspaces in TFS

I've ran into an issue where I had to switch user under which i was connecting to TFS. Somehow workspace from my previous account was still present in the system and checking out solution to the same folder under the new workspace ended up with errors.

There's a tool called Team Foundation Sidekicks which can help to resolve this situation. You can view all workspaces, modify them, etc... Awesome tool, free one too!

ASP.Net Web Service Reference error

I've encountered interesting error when dealing with web-services in Web Site (ASP.Net 4.0).

Scenario:

MyWeb - ASP.Net 4.0 web site project

MyService - ASP.Net WCF service

MyCode.dll - library share user by both, MyWeb and MyService.

Now, the issue is when you change MyCode, recompile MyService and do "Update Service Reference" in the MyWeb. What I found, that I start getting compilation errors saying that the client class from the MyService reference is not known (as if the reference was missing).

Cause: The MyWeb project was referencing the MyCode library not as a project, but rather as DLL reference.

Solution: Quite obvious - either use project reference or update the DLL used by the web-site.

This behavior is to be expected, however if you don't realize that you're not using same DLL version from both MyService and MyWeb, it can be quite confusing.

VS2010 and TFS credentials

VS2010 for some reason doesn't save TFS credentials if you connect to the TFS server. Under Win7 there's a trick that you can use to fix this:

Open up the user credentials (this is for Windows 7): Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\Credential Manager
To the right of the Windows Credentials title is "Add a Windows credential". Click that link.
In the "Internet ro network address (e.g., myserver, server.company.com) box put: tfs
In the User name, put: DOMAIN\username (your username)
In the password, your password.

The whole description is here.

IE8 wrong style rendering on IIS / ASP.Net Dev server

I've ran into issues when site renders perfectly in VS's ASP.Net Dev Server on IE8, but when published to IIS, some styles are messed up. To make it even more confusing, it renders correctly when displayed locally on the web server and incorrectly when accessed from different machine.

Apparently I'm not the only one having this issue - and the solution is simple. Let IE know that the page should be rendered in correct mode.

Solution 1 - add following to the 'head' tag of the page:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

Solution 2 - add this section to the web.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<httpProtocol>
<customHeaders>
<clear />
<add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=EmulateIE7" />
</customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

The detailed description from Microsoft is here.

Dev Tools

I stumbled upon interesting list of tools for developers : 20 Must-have free tools
I actually agree with most of the list, but have 2 interesting which i'm going to check out soon:
1) Doxygen - for generating documentation
2) KDiff - code merge tool as i'm still not completely happy with DiffMerge
Oh, and Pixy has released new version of his online Color Scheme Designer - priceless!

WPF - the pain!

As i'm struggling my way through the first WPF application, I keep running into interesting reading (essential really) which seems to be a must for a WPF virgin like me.
A Guided Tour of WPF is priceless, also his article on dependancy properties provides excellent view and i'm sure there's more to explore...
Since i'm struggling with trying to bind ListView to a collection of objects (piece of cake) and also to group the items (pain in the b*), i'm forced to actually try and learn the basics :) There's a very nice article on WPF Data Binding on CodeProject.
Once i figure out the bloody groupping thing, i'll post the sample code here.