Creating a TeamCity meta-runner

Starting with TeamCity 8.x you can now “extract” repetitive tasks into build runners, called meta-runners,  that you can re-use without the need for coding a plugin, or as JetBrains themselves like to put it: With a meta-runner, you can easily reuse existing runners, create new runners for typical tasks (e.g. publish to FTP, delete directory, […]

TFS vs. Git…or is it TFS with Git?

Maybe you ended up on this post because you searched for ‘Git vs. TFS’. I hope so. I have seen some debate going on for some time now in twitter about Git versus TFS (here are some examples): If that’s the case I think you’re looking at it from the wrong angle, so to say. […]

SpecFlow: using environment specific settings (part 2)

In a previous blog post I discussed how to “push” environment specific settings into the execution of a SpecFlow scenario. This post is more an “end-to-end” example of a situation where this might be handy to use. It will also give me a chance of showing off a another favorite of mine, TeamCity. The details […]

SpecFlow: using environment specific settings

One of the things I commonly see people struggling with is how to “push” environment specific settings into the execution of a SpecFlow scenario. This post will provide some background into the problem and later present my solution to the problem. Background/Problem Sometimes you might have a scenario (or several) that you wish to execute […]

TeamCity Pro Tip: Why you should separate your deployment code from your application code

This post is really one of those “summary of best practices” articles that I’ve learned by using TeamCity build server from JetBrains for quite some time now. In Theory Below is an image that might be pretty common. We have an application. We have some deployment scripts. We would like to push the application to […]

Changing unit-test frameworks with the help of fluent assertions

There are numerous reasons to why I keep using the little micro framework called Fluent Assertions. However recently I ran into a little situation that might not be so well documented so I thought I’d tell you about it here instead.   Problem/Background In a project I was involved in recently we had been using […]

Using TeamCity for ASP.NET development: Deploying

This is the third part of a blog post series on using TeamCity continuous integration server from JetBrains for asp.net development. Here are the links to the parts of the series: Installing/Configuring TeamCity for use with IIS MSBuild requirements for web package publishing Deploying via Web Deploy [this post] Backup (pre-deploy) 3. Deploying via Web […]

Understanding the basics of web deploy

The first encounter you probably will have with web deploy (a.k.a. MSDeploy or the Web Deployment Tool) as a Microsoft developer using asp.net is the “publish” web application option in Visual Studio. Yes, that’s right…when you push that button it uses web deploy through the MSBuild build system to accomplish a publish of your web […]

Better arrange readability with new Moq fluent functional specifications

I love Moq which is a little micro framework for controlling the behavior of dependencies, or at least that is how usually use it…sort of. (some might call it a mocking framework…well, anyway) One of the disadvantages of Moq however is that the syntax can be a bit complicated and the arrange part of the […]

Avoiding serialization issues in SharePoint property bags by using JSON

Storing application settings in a SharePoint solution can be done in numerous ways. One of the more robust solutions is to use the property bags that exist all throughout the hierarchy of the SharePoint object model. The only real issue that we have in all of these property bags are that we can store any […]