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Sidekicks are available for RC!

Both TFS Sidekicks and MSBuild Sidekick v3 are now available for Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. Check the following posts on Attrice blog - Team Foundation Sidekicks 2010 updated for RC and MSBuild Sidekick v3 is updated for RC . Mirrored from Attrice blog

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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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...
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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...
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MSBuild Sidekick v 2.3 is released

We are happy to announce the release of version 2.3 of MSBuild Sidekick! Many of you would remember " How would you spend $100 on MSBuild? " poll published on MSBuild Team Blog. MSBuild users were asked to vote on most valuable future features in MSBuild; and while we could not improve MSBuild engine performance or add inline tasks support we did implement visual debugger for MSBuild! MSBuild Sidekick v2.3 is now the one-stop solution for all your debugging needs such as stepping through...
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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...

MSBuild Sidekick 2.1 is available

Talk about Fools' Day joke - but on 1st of April we have released version 2.1 of MSBuild Sidekick . This version contains quite a few bug fixes, but we managed to put several new features in it too: When .Net schema version is selected in Build Options dialog, the application now will use the appropriate set of MSBuild assemblies for the build (previous version used 3.5 to build 2.0 schema projects when .Net 3.5 Framework was installed). That way build can be performed with exactly the same version...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 4 comment(s)
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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...
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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...

.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...

MSBuild Sidekick v2 released!

In the last day of the year 2007, we have made available a production release of MSBuild Sidekick v2 . It has a number of bug fixes over December beta version and features full MSBuild 3.5 schema support, allowing you to create and build projects for Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5. Download 30-day fully functional trial version and see for yourself. While it requires a license after the trial period, the product is very competitively priced . And if you averse to the commercial software...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 1 comment(s)
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MSBuild Sidekick v2 Q&A session

With the release of MSBuild Sidekick v2 , several questions have been asked repeatedly. But what is the better venue to have a semblance of dialog than blog? So here is a short list of Questions and Answers: Q: What does "limited-time beta version" mean? A: The version released has a time bomb in it that will expire on December 31st (meaning that the application will not work past this date). That's as far as "limited-time" is concerned; "beta" means that since it...
Posted by Eugene Zakhareyev | 1 comment(s)
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Vista installation problem fixed

Great thanks to John Robbins for identifying the issue with the installation of MSBuild Sidekick v2 on Vista (the installation on Vista without admin privileges failed). As of December 7th, the issue was fixed. The updated installer can be downloaded here .
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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...

Homage to the community

With the release of version 2 of our MSBuild Sidekick, I would like to use the occasion to thank the community for the feedback and bug reports; especially large thank-you goes to (order does not imply anything): Doron Neumann Nathan Jones Justin Josef Angel Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi Steve St. Jean Anatoly Popov Bernard Vander Beken Alan Cyment Martin Bohring Chad Shelfhout John Moshakis Vipin Goal Simon Devlin Jesper Hogstrom Big thanks also to Dan Moseley and MSBuild team, and special thanks to Maria...
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