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Strongly naming the Microsoft Enterprise Library

I suppose you have tried the Enterprise Library from Microsoft. You probably also used it in a project that should be strongly named. Seems like the compiled DLL's in Eneterprise Library are not Strongly named! Well, the intention is that, as long as the source code is shipped with Enterprise Library, the DLL's are not Strongly named. You have to do it yourself. Fair enough, and the solution is described in Tom Hollander's blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2005/04/05/405764.aspx

If you still can't figure it out, here are the gory details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2005/12/02/499529.aspx#502110

Tags: Tools

Team Foundation Server licensing model

I have used Team Foundation Server Beta 3 refresh and RC for a while. The product has many of the same functionalities as CruiseControl.NET and nUnit, except that you get a complete package of tools and templates integrated with Visual Studio. Ok, that's fine, I actually like tightly integrated tools (when they work as expected), but how about licensing?

Ok, for you guys that have installed TFS and uses Continuous Integration or doing manual/nightly builds with the integrated build system, you have probably configured testing and code analysis for the build. But then you get some server errors, right?

Typical errors are:

In order to perform Code Analysis on managed binaries, MSBuild needs to launch FxCop. MSBuild is unable to locate the FxCop binaries. Make sure Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers or Visual Studio Team Suite is installed and run MSBuild from within the "Visual Studio Command Prompt" or specify the path to FxCop by setting the FXCOPDIR environment variable."

The installation documentation does not state that you have to install FxCop or Visual Studio 2005 for Developers on the machine. Well, anyway, you decide to fix the issue and installs Visual Studio 2005 for Developers. The errors goes away!

Then you start exploring with WebTesting and Load Testing, which are cool features in Visual Studio 2005 for Testers. But, again, you get some new errors:

C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v8.0\TeamBuild\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.targets : warning : TestTypes\{37e36796-fb51-4610-8d5c-e00ceaa68b9f} could not be loaded because the TIP could not be instantiated for the following reason(s): Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.LoadTestPackage, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
….

Hmmm…this seems odd, I can't do load testing on the build server. Again trying to solve this issue, I installs Visual Studio 2005 for Testers on the Build Server. But, how about licensing? Do I need a new license to run my tests ? Well, not really. The Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System Licensing states the following:

"As part of the build process, Team Foundation Server may run quality tests and/or analysis on the precompiled or compiled code. These tests rely on functionality found within Team System client products, typically within the Team Edition for Software Developers or Team Edition for Software Testers products. These products may be installed on the build machine by licensed users of those products, as long as they are not directly used by any individuals who are not licensed for those products. Team Foundation Server will gather results of the build as well as any quality tests or analysis and deposit them in the Team Foundation Server data repository."

In my team, only 1 person has the complete Team Suite, as it's quite expensive. We get Visual Studio 2005 for Developers through our partner program with Microsoft (Gold partner). In real life this means, it's OK to install VS 2005 Team Suite (or for Testers) on the Build server as long as one Team member has the license. But, the other team members cannot log on to the server and use the Team Suite to configure the build process. The license is personal, meaning that the person who has the license, can install it anywhere and do whatever he/she want's with it.

Still wondering wheter TFS is worth the license, as you can achieve the same results with OpenSource software, but with not so integrated tools. I would say, that if you have a license with Team Suite, go ahead and configure the TFS environment, if not go OpenSource.

A couple of links:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/showpost.aspx?postid=276741&siteid=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=98242&SiteID=1

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Tags: TFS

re-sign assemblies for code coverage in test configuration

I'm still trying to understand the testconfigurations in Visual Studio 2005. Having a rather standard setup of a webproject by having the presentation in a ASP.NET Web project and the business components in a Library project as well as some other utility projects. We are running code analysis on the projects to follow the guidelines of coding standards set by FxCop.

The utility assemblies and the business component are all strongly typed as suggested by the code analysis. I have configured a test project (using the default created localtestrun.testrunconfig) and specified to run certain tests for the different assemblies. Now here comes the problem. In the localtestrun.testrunconfig the code coverage should also be analyzed. This works fine by re-signing the strongly named assemblies, but in the GUI for the test configuration, it is only possible to specify one key file to use for re-signing the assemblies (or actually only one assembly). What were they thinking? Should I use one key file for all my assemblies? I don't think so.

The solution is: Open the localtestrun.testrunconfig in an xml editor (notepad, XmlSpy, whatever) and you will se that each Assembly has a node for specifying the keyFile. so, Microsoft actually supports the feature by re-signing each assembly (which is logical), but the testconfiguration GUI in Visual Studio does not! Please give me a service pack to VS (pronounced Vicous Studio) 2005 soon, I still consider it a BETA product.