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Saturday, May 16, 2009 9:07 AM

How to review Properties & Items while debugging with MSBuild Sidekick

In the recent post we described the basics of debugging typical MSBuild project. In this post we shall touch upon important feature of MSBuild Sidekick debugger – namely inspecting Property and Item values during debugging with Globals and Autos windows. The walkthrough below will show how to review Property and Item values while debugging: 1. Start debugging project in step-by-step mode ( see previous post ) 2. When Target/Task is selected (highlighted with bold border in Debug window) click on...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:01 AM

How to debug step-by-step with MSBuild Sidekick

Have you ever tried to debug MSBuild project? If you did, in all probability you had to resort to introducing extra Message tasks into the project to output status during project execution; and then execute build and review the logs time after time to identify the problems (perhaps adding more Message tasks as you proceed). Now you can debug your projects without ever adding extra “Message” tasks while reviewing build execution in real time – jut use MSBuild Sidekick debugger and resolve problems...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:17 AM

How to use MSBuild Extension Pack tasks with MSBuild Sidekick

One of the most exciting and widely accepted projects in MSBuild community is MSBuild Extension Pack tasks. MSBuild Extension Pack provides a collection of over 240 MSBuild tasks you may use in your MSBuild projects for free! In MSBuild Sidekick v 2.3 we introduced integration with MSBuild Extension Pack tasks; now you can add, edit properties and view online help for all the MSBuild Extension Pack tasks in the Sidekick application. To illustrate these features let’s create new MSBuild project in...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Friday, October 03, 2008 11:10 AM

Code Review Sidekick in action

Right after writing post about using Code Review Sidekick I came across a post by Carel Lotz , that describes how Code Review Sidekick can be used for code review in context of Scrum software development process: “ … a code review process that suited our development team as well as the Team Foundation Server toolset and the Conchango SCRUM for Team System process template we are using. This post details what process and tooling we came up with. ” If you looking for ideas on how to implement code...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Friday, October 03, 2008 10:58 AM

Reviewing changes with Code Review Sidekick

In version 2.0 of Team Foundation Sidekicks we have first introduced Code Review Sidekick; today, I am going to explain in some detail the usage we had in mind while developing the tool. The name of the tool hints on usefulness in code review; however, since everybody has different code review process some extra explanation is required. Let’s start with review of the files, based on changesets committed to source control repository. When you invoke Code Review Sidekick from Source Control Explorer...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 2 comment(s)
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Friday, April 25, 2008 8:26 AM

MSBuild Sidekick documentation is available!

When we released version 2.1 of the Sidekick, the original post failed to mention one pretty significant feature available in version 2.1. The new installer includes not only the application itself but also the manual (in PDF format) to help you leverage MSBuild Sidekick functionality. The document contains description of UI elements, large number of helpful how-to hints and walkthroughs with application usage. It is accessible upon installation of the application through Start->MSBuild Sidekick...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 1 comment(s)
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Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:05 AM

Team Foundation Sidekicks in a nutshell

For a short survey of functionality available in Team Foundation Sidekicks 2.0 , check out March edition of TFS Times newsletter online (or if you prefer it in PDF, download it here ).
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008 9:50 AM

Building Visual Studio solutions with MSBuild Sidekick

What do you do in Visual Studio when you need to develop several related modules at the same time? Probably you'd create a solution to specify the references between related projects (or at the very least, make loading and debugging related projects easier). The interesting fact is while solution files are the main Visual Studio vehicle for building sets of projects, they have a proprietary format, not compliant with MSBuild. So one might wonder - how is it then possible to build solutions from...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | with no comments
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Monday, February 04, 2008 12:58 AM

How to fix problems in MSBuild script - log is the way to go!

One of the features that might strike one as "missing" in MSBuild Sidekick is a debugger. While we have this feature in our road-map for the next release and are working at it, we believe that using the logged data is the easiest way of diagnosing problems in build scripts. The debugger might sound as the definite way to find an issue in MSBuild script, but probably by reviewing the sequence of the targets and tasks in most cases you will have a better chance of identifying the issue (especially...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 1 comment(s)
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Monday, January 28, 2008 7:42 AM

.Net 3.5 support in MSBuild Sidekick v2

In our latest release of MSBuild Sidekick , we provide support for projects compliant with MSBuild 3.5 (which is distributed as part of .Net Framework 3.5). In this post, I shall try to detail some of the features specific to MSBuild 3.5 in our application. First of all, MSBuild Sidekick will use the highest version of .Net Framework assemblies present at the time of the installation; that is, if you have .Net Framework 3.5 installed, MSBuild Sidekick will use MSBuild 3.5 assemblies for building...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 1 comment(s)
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Monday, December 03, 2007 7:18 AM

Visualization in MSBuild Sidekick v2

I have decided that I am going to blog a bit about new features we have in v2 of our tool; the first feature selected is target visualization. The rational behind this feature goes like that - what if my build script takes lots of time to execute? Then changing it, running it, changing again to fix issues etc. becomes bothesome very quickly. So ideally one should be able to preview the build script execution (similar perhaps to EXPLAIN PLAN Oracle command, if you know what I mean). In MSBuild Sidekick...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 26 comment(s)
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Friday, January 05, 2007 7:25 AM

TFS Labels made easy with Labels Sidekick

The latest release of Team Foundation Sidekicks application includes brand new tool, Labels Sidekick. The current post explores functionality bundled in that tool and how it may help you in working with TFS labels. Main screen of Sidekicks consists of two panes (in manner similar to other Sidekicks UI). Left pane allows one to specify set of criteria and search labels according to the criteria specified. The labels are searchable by the following criteria: Label name (name may include wildcards ...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 10 comment(s)
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