.NET Development by Eric

Skype for business mac preview

Posted on September 28, 2016 by erictummers

We’ve been using Lync for some time on Windows and Mac. Microsoft has moved on with Skype for business on the Windows platform. Now a preview for the Mac is available and I decided to sign up for the preview at https://www.skypepreview.com

After been accepted I dowloaded the latest build and started using it. The App has a “check-for-updates” menu item, so no more searching for the download link.

Little snitch reports connections to hockeyapp.com, microsoft.com and microsoftonline.nl. This is expected with preview / beta software. Other connections go to lyncdiscover.valid.nl and autodiscover.valid.nl to connect to my colleagues at valid.nl.

Everything works like on the Windows platform. Some features are missing, but the core functionality is there. Like chatting, voice / video and screen sharing.

My experience is good. I mainly use the chat to communicate with colleagues and that just works. We’re planning to do monthly virtual meetups and then it’ll have to prove worthy.

Posted in Tooling, Uncategorized | Tagged Lync, Mac, Microsoft, skype | 2 Comments

Week 38 roundup

Posted on September 23, 2016 by erictummers

Last week recap and links:

Powershell syntax in Sublime Text 2, the method is for Windows but also applies to Mac
We used the build definition settings (TFS2015) to use a two digit month and dayOfTheMonth buildnumber. The key is to use the Date token in stead of Month and DayOfMonth: $(Year:yyyy).$(Date:MM).$(Date:dd)$(Rev:.rr)
Continuous deployment with TFS and Azure Websites can be customised. Applies to all real-life, multiple-websites-solution and more-advanced-than-the-demo projects.

Image courtesy of kanate / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are your best reads this week? Leave them in the comments below.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Azurewebsites, Build, deployment, powershell, roundup, sublime, tfs | Leave a comment

Spark as alternative to Cloudmagic

Posted on September 19, 2016 by erictummers

Cloudmagic used to be my email client on iOS. But with the introduction of Newton it became a paid service. Since there are free alternatives I decided to switch. My new favourite is Spark.

sparkapp

What I want

My list of requirements is short but specific:

Support for IMAP, iCloud and GMail
Integration with Evernote
Free or one-time-purchase

Spark

Setup was simple. Spark recognised my (dutch) provider and only needed my email address and password. Integration with 1Password made entering the credentials a no-brainer.
The integration with Evernote is great. Just grant access via the Evernote App and now you can swipe an email to Evernote. Swipe actions are customisable.
The interface needs some getting used to and I’m not sure if I’ll ever use the quick reply feature.

Alternatives

In my quest I noticed Boxer. Swipe actions just like Spark. Paid app usually mean great support but setup of IMAP failed miserably.
Outlook is praised everywhere. The integration is limited to Calendar events for Evernote reminders. So no chocolate.

Allow only release build to be published

Posted on July 6, 2016 by erictummers

We have a WPF application that we distribute with click-once deployment. The update feature is exactly what we need for our product. Getting the new build from Development into Production is easy, just publish.

The problem is that we only want Release builds to be published. Config transformation, code optimisation and custom icons are some of the main reasons we want to publish a Release build. Sometimes we forget to change the configuration and a Debug build is released into the wild.

As a safety net we added the BeforePublish build target to the project.

<Target Name="BeforePublish">
    <Error Condition="'$(Configuration)'!='Release'" 
           Text="Only Release build can be published" />
</Target>

Now when we try to publish without setting the configuration to Release the build fails.

publish.debug.fails

Since this is a very small project we haven’t setup automated build. The errors should keep us safe for now.

Posted in Development | Tagged Build, Click Once Deployment, WPF | Leave a comment

Version store out of memory

Posted on June 29, 2016 by erictummers

In our current project we use Sql Server Data Tools (sqlproj) to put our database in source control. Recently we experienced random exceptions during loading and building the solution with multiple sql projects.

Last week our builds started to fail. The logging showed something like

MSB4018: The “SqlBuildTask” task failed unexpectedly.
Microsoft.Isam.Esent.Interop.EsentVersionStoreOutOfMemoryException: Version store out of memory (cleanup already attempted)

On Microsoft Connect we found a workaround. By adding commandline option /p:CmdLineInMemoryStorage=TRUE the build worked again. Seems there is someone working at Microsoft with a great name 😉

Posted in Development | Tagged msbuild, sql server data tools, tfs, visual studio | 1 Comment

.NET Development by Eric

Skype for business mac preview

Week 38 roundup