Black Marble

Version stamping Windows 8 Store App manifests in TFS build
Richard Fennell Oct 7, 2014 · 3 min read · Uncategorised ·
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We have for a long time used the TFSVersion custom build activity to stamp all our TFS builds with a unique version number that matches out build number. However, this only edits the AssemblyInfo.cs file. As we are now building more and more Windows 8 Store Apps we also need to edit the XML in the Package.appxmanifest …
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Updated blog server to BlogEngine.NET 3.1
Richard Fennell Oct 1, 2014 · 1 min read · Uncategorised ·
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Last night I upgraded this blog server to BlogEngine.NET 3.1. I used the new built in automated update tool, in an offline backup copy of course.
It did most of the job without any issues. The only extra things I needed to do was
- Removed a <add name="XmlRoleProvider" …> entry in the web.config. I have …
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Swapping the the Word template in a VSTO project
Richard Fennell Sep 22, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised ·
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We have recently swapped the Word template we use to make sure all our proposals and other documents are consistent. The changes are all cosmetic, fonts, footers etc. to match our new website; it still makes use of the same VSTO automation to do much of the work. The problem was I needed to swap the .DOTX file within …
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Using MSDEPLOY from Release Management to deploy Azure web sites
Richard Fennell Sep 18, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised ·
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Whilst developing our new set of websites we have been using MSDeploy to package up the websites for deployment to test and production Azure accounts. These deployments were being triggered directly using Visual Studio. Now we know this is not best practice, you don’t want developers shipping to production from their …
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Speaking at PreEmptive’s event on Application Analytics in London on the 30th of September
Richard Fennell Sep 18, 2014 · 1 min read · Uncategorised ·
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I am speaking at PreEmptive’s event on Application Analytics in at Microsoft’s office in London on the 30th of September. There are various speakers from PreEmptive, Microsoft and Black Marble at this free event.
There are still spaces available, just follow the link: Application Analytics with Visual Studio and …

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“Communication with the deployer was lost during deployment” error with Release Management
Richard Fennell Sep 18, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised ·
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Whilst developing a new Release Management pipeline I did hit a problem that a component that published MSDeploy packages to Azure started to fail. It had been working then suddenly I started seeing ‘communication with the deployer was lost during deployment’ messages as shown below.

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Moving our BlogEngine.NET server to Azure
Richard Fennell Sep 16, 2014 · 4 min read · Uncategorised ·
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As part of our IT refresh we have decided to move this BlogEngine.NET server from a Hyper-V VM in our office to an Azure website.
BlogEngine.NET is now a gallery item for Azure website, so a few clicks and your should be up and running.
class="image_figure …

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Publishing more than one Azure Cloud Service as part of a TFS build
Richard Fennell Sep 10, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised ·
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Using the process in my previous post you can get a TFS build to create the .CSCFG and .CSPKG files needed to publish a Cloud Service. However, you hit a problem if your solution contains more that one Cloud Service project; as opposed to a single cloud service project with multiple roles, which is not a problem.
The …

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Getting the correct path and name for a project to pass as an MSBuild argument in TFS Build
Richard Fennell Sep 10, 2014 · 2 min read · Uncategorised ·
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I have been sorting out some builds for use with Release Management that include Azure Cloud Solutions. To get the correct packages built by TFS I have followed the process in my past blog post. The problem was I kept getting the build error
1The target "Azure PackagesBlackMarble.Win8AppBuilder.AzureApi" does …
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Deploying a Windows service with Release Management
Richard Fennell Sep 9, 2014 · 6 min read · Uncategorised ·
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recently needed to deploy a Windows service as part of a Release Management pipeline. In the past, our internal systems I have only need to deploy DB (via SSDT Dacpacs) and Websites (via MSDeploy), so a new experience.
WIX Contents
The first step to to create an MSI installer for the service. This was done using WIX, …

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WIX Contents