Team Foundation 2010: Associate work item with changeset AFTER check in.

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Today I was struggling associating a work item with a changeset after a check in. There is however no options for this in the UI. Or is there? Let’s check:

Cannot edit work items from changeset window

Ok, so not through the changeset UI.

Let’s check the command line.

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC>tf changeset /?
TF - Team Foundation Version Control Tool, Version 10.0.30319.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Displays information about a changeset and lets you change the associated
attributes, such as comments and check-in notes.

tf changeset [/comment:("comment"|@commentfile)]
             [/notes:("NoteFieldName"="NoteFieldValue"|@notefile)] [/noprompt]
             [/collection:TeamProjectCollectionUrl]
             [changesetnumber | /latest] [/login:username,[password]]

(emphasis mine).

So not through the command line. Now what? Let’s think: we want to associate a changeset with a work item. Why not look the other way around?

After the successful commit remember the changeset # (in our example 25464), go to the work item you want to associate the changeset to.

Right bottom you’ll see a tab called ‘Links’ (1), click it, and then click the ‘Link to’ (2) button.

Associate work item with changeset

In the next window, select ‘Changeset’ (1) and enter the number in the box (2). Hit  ‘OK’ (3).

Associate part II

After that hit ‘CTR+S’ to save your work item.

After that go back to your changeset:

It's there!

It works!

Have a good one!

-Kristof

Silverlight 4: Bug in TabControl.TabStripPlacement = Dock.Left and OnApplyTemplate

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At work I ran into a bug with the Silverlight TabControl, more specifically when setting the TabStripPlacement to Dock.Left and hiding one of the TabItems in the parent’s OnApplyTemplate.

The way to get to this bug is quite specific. For example, you can’t do it when you’re using a UserControl, since in that kind of class OnApplyTemplate is never called.

You need to build a class which inherits from Control.

public class TabControlTest : Control

Then we have the style of this particular class:

<Style TargetType="TabControlTest:TabControlTest"> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="TabControlTest:TabControlTest"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> <RowDefinition Height="38" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <sdk:TabControl TabStripPlacement="{TemplateBinding TabStripPlacement}" Grid.Row="0"> <sdk:TabItem Header="First"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="A" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> <sdk:TabItem Header="Second" x:Name="middleTabItem"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="B" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> <sdk:TabItem Header="Last"> <sdk:TabItem.Content> <TextBlock Text="C" /> </sdk:TabItem.Content> </sdk:TabItem> </sdk:TabControl> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Center" Grid.Row="1" Content="{TemplateBinding ShowOrHide}" Command="{TemplateBinding ShowOrHideCommand}" /> </Grid> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style>

As you can see I’ve named the middle TabItem (“middleTabItem”) so I can retrieve it in the OnApplyTemplate:

public override void OnApplyTemplate()
{
    this._middleTabItem = (TabItem) this.GetTemplateChild("middleTabItem");
    this._middleTabItem.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;

    base.OnApplyTemplate();
}

Now if the following 2 conditions are matched:

  1. TabStripPlacement is set to Dock.Left (it doesn’t happen on ‘Top’)
  2. We set the Visibility of the said TabItem to Collapsed in the OnApplyTemplate of the surrounding Control

Then we cannot make the TabItem Visible anymore.

To show or hide I use the following code:

this.ShowOrHideCommand = new Command(() =>
                                         {
                                            this.ShowOrHideText = string.Format(SwitchTo, this._middleTabItem.Visibility);
                                            this._middleTabItem.Visibility = this._middleTabItem.Visibility == Visibility.Visible ? Visibility.Collapsed : Visibility.Visible;
                                         });

The solution to this is to call the OnApplyTemplate of the TabControl itself so that it recalculates it’s children’s location (or something, I’m not sure):

Give the TabControl a name, fetch it in OnApplyTemplate of your Control:

<sdk:TabControl TabStripPlacement="{TemplateBinding TabStripPlacement}" x:Name="TabControl" Grid.Row="0">
public override void OnApplyTemplate()
{
    this._middleTabItem = (TabItem) this.GetTemplateChild("middleTabItem");
    this._middleTabItem.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
    this._tabControl = (TabControl) this.GetTemplateChild("TabControl");
    base.OnApplyTemplate();
}

And call the _tabControl’s OnApplyTemplate after switching the Visibility to Visible:

this.ShowOrHideCommand = new Command(() =>
                                         {
                                            this.ShowOrHideText = string.Format(SwitchTo, this._middleTabItem.Visibility);
                                            this._middleTabItem.Visibility = this._middleTabItem.Visibility == Visibility.Visible ? Visibility.Collapsed : Visibility.Visible;
                                            this._tabControl.OnApplyTemplate();
                                         });

This will make the UI respond correctly. For your convenience I’ve added the SL project, and you can download it here.

Community Day 2011: Win the ticket Build in Anaheim, CA!

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On September 13th until September 16th Microsoft hosts the Build event in Anaheim California. You can find more information on www.buildwindows.com !

With this I hope to win the ticket to Build, here at Community Day 2011! It would be awesome for me to get the first look at Windows 8!

Me and some Smurfs

You can follow #bldwin also on Twitter!

Stay tuned and thumbs up for me! (please Open-mouthed smile)

Clear all event logs on Windows using PowerShell

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I was bored with the vast amount of data in the eventlogs which were really not useful for me. So, in order to improve readability on my machine I decided to look for something to clear all of the eventlogs. Easy.

Since I always use the Administrative Events filter to view every warning and error I get a lot of junk (who cares for Kernel-Power warnings?)

Administrative Events

Since I didn’t feel like doing the following steps for each frigging event log there is on my machine. You would need to go to the following steps:

Step 1

Step 2

Now this is an excerpt  from the eventlogs I have on this machine:

Analytic
Application
DirectShowFilterGraph
DirectShowPluginControl
EndpointMapper
ForwardedEvents
HardwareEvents
Internet Explorer
Key Management Service
MF_MediaFoundationDeviceProxy
MediaFoundationDeviceProxy
MediaFoundationPerformance
MediaFoundationPipeline
MediaFoundationPlatform
Microsoft-IE/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IEDVTOOL/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IEFRAME/Diagnostic
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Administrative
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Analytic
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Debug
Microsoft-IIS-Configuration/Operational
Microsoft-PerfTrack-IEFRAME/Diagnostic
Microsoft-PerfTrack-MSHTML/Diagnostic
Microsoft-Windows-ADSI/Debug
Microsoft-Windows-API-Tracing/Operational
Microsoft-Windows-ATAPort/General
Microsoft-Windows-ATAPort/SATA-LPM
Microsoft-Windows-ActionQueue/Analytic
Microsoft-Windows-AltTab/Diagnostic
Microsoft-Windows-AppID/Operational
Microsoft-Windows-AppLocker/EXE and DLL
Microsoft-Windows-AppLocker/MSI and Script
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Admin
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Analytic
Microsoft-Windows-Application Server-Applications/Debug

And so on (for about 10 times as large). I’m not going to clear them by hand.

So let’s call Powershell to the rescue! (Play Thunderbirds theme song!)

First of all (and nothing to do with Powershell): wevtutil

We’re going to use this tool to display every available event source on this machine:

wevtutil el

The help states: 

el | enum-logs          List log names.

Good, that’s what we need. Next up, we pass every line of this list to a command using a pipe and the Powershell Foreach-Object cmdlet

wevtutil el | Foreach-Object { … commands go here … }

The commands are going to be

wevtutil cl “$_”

The help states: 

cl | clear-log          Clear a log.

And $_ is the current variable in the enumeration of Foreach-Object. I added the quotes since there are event sources with spaces and we need to have the full name in order to have wevtutil to be able to clear that log.

Now let’s add some diagnostics output to see which one we’re currently clearing:

wevtutil el | Foreach-Object {Write-Host "Clearing $_"; wevtutil cl "$_"}

Now just run it through Powershell, and bam, a clean event log.

Result

Cheers!

Visual Studio 2010 SP1: DebuggerTypeProxy works again! *yay*

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A while ago I bumped into a bug in Visual Studio 2010 + Silverlight 4.

While working with a List / Dictionary / … it didn’t show the items in the list, instead it showed the normal ‘raw view’:

No debug view

As you can see, there was no view to see the items.

What you would expect to see is this:

DebugView!

I reported the bug (many others did too!). The problem was that it was fixed in SL3, but not ported to SL4.

Now it’s fixed! This makes my work a lot easier. When we get SP1 @ work too that is!

Cheers!

.NET natural sort, a possible solution.

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You have a list of items, let’s say 20 elements, starting at 1, until 20 (inclusive). We shuffle the list and we try to sort it.

  1. List<string> normalDotNetSort = GiveMeANewList();

The code to create the list:

  1. private static List<string> GiveMeANewList()
  2. {
  3.     List<string> list = new List<string>();
  4.  
  5.     for (int i = 1; i <= 20; i++)
  6.     {
  7.         list.Add(string.Format("{0}", i));
  8.     }
  9.  
  10.     return list.MixList();
  11. }

MixList just shuffles the list.

We’re using a normal Generic List and to sort, let’s use the Sort method, and write it to the console:

  1. normalDotNetSort.Sort();
  2. normalDotNetSort.ForEach(Console.WriteLine);

What would be the result?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
2
20
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

That’s not what we wanted, but it is what we told the code to do. It first sorts on the first character, and then on the second (and so on…). That’s why 19 takes precedence of 2, since 1 < 2.

How do we fix this?

There is a little gem in the shlwapi.dll, namely StrCmpLogicalW. Since this is a native function we need to do a DllImport to expose the function to our C# code:

  1. public static class SafeNativeMethods
  2. {
  3.     [DllImport("shlwapi.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
  4.     public static extern int StrCmpLogicalW(string psz1, string psz2);
  5. }

Now we can use this function in our own string comparer:

  1. public sealed class NaturalStringComparer : IComparer<string>
  2. {
  3.     #region IComparer<string> Members
  4.  
  5.     public int Compare(string x, string y)
  6.     {
  7.         return SafeNativeMethods.StrCmpLogicalW(x, y);
  8.     }
  9.  
  10.     #endregion
  11. }

And use this comparer to sort our list:

  1. List<string> interopSort = GiveMeANewList();
  2. interopSort.Sort(new NaturalStringComparer());
  3. interopSort.ForEach(Console.WriteLine);

And the result:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Much better no?

Dictionary<TKey, TValue> finding key: try/catch vs TryGetValue

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Today I saw some code where the developer accessed a dictionary like this:

  1. void Foo(int keyToFindInDictionary)
  2. {
  3.     Dictionary<int, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<int, string>();
  4.  
  5.     try
  6.     {
  7.         DoSomethingWithTheResult(dictionary[keyToFindInDictionary]);
  8.     }
  9.     catch (KeyNotFoundException)
  10.     {
  11.         // fallback
  12.     }
  13. }
  14.  
  15. private void DoSomethingWithTheResult(string s)
  16. {
  17.     // do something
  18. }

As you can see he catches the exception to handle the fact that the given key was not found in the dictionary.

I told him that there was a better way, i.e. Dictionary<TKey, TValue>.TryGetValue.

And then the curious part of me started thinking, how much better is it? Is it faster? Slower?

So I wrote the following small piece of code to test my statement that TryGetValue is better than catching the KeyNotFoundException.

  1. namespace DictionaryTryGetValueVersusException
  2. {
  3.     using System;
  4.     using System.Collections.Generic;
  5.     using System.Diagnostics;
  6.  
  7.     internal class Program
  8.     {
  9.         private static void Main()
  10.         {
  11.             // create a dictionary with some values
  12.             Dictionary<string, string> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();
  13.  
  14.             // add 10,000 items
  15.             for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
  16.             {
  17.                 if (i == 5000)
  18.                 {
  19.                     // skip
  20.                     continue;
  21.                 }
  22.  
  23.                 dictionary.Add(string.Format("Key{0}", i), string.Format("Value{0}", i));
  24.             }
  25.  
  26.             Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();
  27.  
  28.             stopwatch.Start();
  29.  
  30.             const string keyToFindInDictionary = "Key5000";
  31.  
  32.             for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
  33.             {
  34.                 // 5000 does not exist
  35.                 try
  36.                 {
  37.                     // execute a method on the variable, so that he compiler doesn't optimize it.
  38.                     dictionary[keyToFindInDictionary];
  39.                 }
  40.                 catch (Exception)
  41.                 {
  42.                     // ignore
  43.                 }
  44.             }
  45.  
  46.             stopwatch.Stop();
  47.             Console.WriteLine("Dictionary lookup with try/catch took: {0}", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks);
  48.  
  49.             stopwatch.Restart();
  50.  
  51.             for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++)
  52.             {
  53.                 string notFound;
  54.                 // 5000 does not exist
  55.                 dictionary.TryGetValue(keyToFindInDictionary, out notFound);
  56.             }
  57.  
  58.             stopwatch.Stop();
  59.             Console.WriteLine("Dictionary lookup with TryGetValue took: {0}", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks);
  60.  
  61.             Console.WriteLine("Done, press enter to exit");
  62.             Console.ReadLine();
  63.         }
  64.     }
  65. }

As you can see we add 10,000 items to the dictionary, skipping the 5000th item, and then we do a lookup in the dictionary, 10,000 times, on the key that doesn’t exist, to measure the performance difference between the 2 previously discussed methods.

To run this test I did a Release Build in Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0, Any CPU, and this is the result:

Results

Dictionary lookup with try/catch took: 1069625
Dictionary lookup with TryGetValue took: 864
Done, press enter to exit

As you can see there is a HUGE difference. The TryGetValue-way was about 1237 faster!

Exception throwing is very heavy! Don’t forget that. It doesn’t mean that you need to program without exceptions, but when you EXPECT that a Key is not present in a given dictionary, don’t use the exception. Use the TryGetValue. If you always expect it to be there then it’s normal to catch the exception, because it’s exceptional that the key was not found.

PS: I tried the code again by skipping the 9999th item, and the results were about the same, take or leave a few milliseconds. So searching in the dictionary is very performant (close to O(1), as written in the Remarks section on this page.)

Stopping Casini before (re)building website in Visual Studio revisited

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This is an update of an older post of mine on stopping Casini.

The code posted in the previous article (yes, read it!) only stops Webdev.Webserver, which is included in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Now the problem is that when you’re using Blend and accidently run the app from there (which I hate, I’d prefer it to switch to Visual Studio).

This shortcut will allow you to quickly kill the webdev server of Blend (and that of Visual Studio too). So just keep it as a shortcut.

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe Stop-Process -Name @('WebDev.WebServer*', 'Microsoft.Expression.Web*')

Good luck :)