James Manning's blog

Team Foundation Server + PowerShell = Happiness

Today's C# quiz - does this compile?

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) {...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 11/16/2007

Wishlist item: PowerGUI extension for TFS

I was playing around with a recent update to Quest's PowerGUI (1.0.11.207) and I'm really liking how...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 10/09/2007

Movie you need to watch - King of Kong

Had a fun time visiting with Chad this weekend. We played Halo 3 co-op and beat it a little faster...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 10/01/2007

Quick question-and-answer session about SQL instance support

I got an email from a co-worker asking a few questions about Orcas support for SQL named instances....

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 09/13/2007

The Firefox-ism I miss the most using IE7

It came up during a conversation with a friend that I use IE7 at work as my browser even though it's...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/30/2007

One of my favorite Eclipse-isms comes to VS!

Some of my former jobs involved doing java development in Eclipse. One thing I missed when joining...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/28/2007

I need to get a life.. I think

I was reading a man page today... If netcat makes you rich somehow and you're feeling generous, mail...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/28/2007

Offline mode in Orcas

Today I happened to hit the offline mode dialog in Orcas, albeit unintentionally:

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/23/2007

Quick test to see which URL's are still valid

On an internal mailing list about PowerShell, the question came up how to test a set of url's to see...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/23/2007

Debug your TFS domain authentication issues with dsquery

TFS supports many different authentication scenarios. One of them is the "workgroup mode" where...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/21/2007

I'm having problems with TFS install/upgrade/repair/uninstall - where are the log files?

This post is just so I can paste a URL instead of the same block of text again and again in the...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 07/21/2007

Your OS is horked - do you want to kill it?

This is not a great dialog experience :) Do I want to have this dialog close my OS? :) This was...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 06/15/2007

(Hash)Set in the 3.5 BCL

Since it's coming up on 2 years since I complained that the BCL didn't have Set<T> I figured I...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 06/12/2007

making a quick style (Outlook 2007 using Word 2007 as editor) for emails

I tend to send a lot of text output from shells in my emails, and rather than do so as screen shots,...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 06/08/2007

This may take awhile

I'll take care of the warnings - anyone else want to fix the errors?

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 05/31/2007

PowerShell gotcha of the day: set-content adds newlines by default

In a script I was writing, I was using set-content to put a particular string (just one string) into...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 05/23/2007

Some examples of cmdlets making life easier

Couple things I needed to do today - you can see how they were much simpler thanks to a couple of...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 05/14/2007

randomness

Things I've stumbled across: connecting to a SQL Server database engine instance on a port can be...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 05/03/2007

moments of inspired inspiration and lucid clarity

While emailing back and forth with Keith tonight (ok, well, this morning in EDT, but he's in...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/31/2007

Is my "Get" using the version control proxy?

I've had a couple of co-workers that noticed their "get" calls to sync their workspaces running a...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/29/2007

WMI queries comparison: C# vs. PowerShell

Don't get me wrong, I love C#, but PowerShell's built-in support for WMI is so nice. Even not using...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/29/2007

PowerShell - coming (in the box!) to a Longhorn Server near you

On my birthday (Feb 15th), I got some great news that I haven't been able to share publicly until...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/28/2007

mini forum hiatus to catch up on Real Work

When our last divisional email from Joe came out this past Friday, it turns out I was #1 in DevDiv...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/27/2007

PowerShell gotcha - foreach keyword vs. foreach-object cmdlet

This came up on an internal mailing list and I thought others may find it interesting. Here was my...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/22/2007

The branching guidance whitepaper has arrived!

There's been about a thousand (give or take) forum posts asking for branching advice, so I'm happy...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/20/2007

get-hashes.ps1: Get the hashes (sha256, md5, whatever) for a file

A slight modification of Mike's version, since sometimes I want md5, sometimes sha1, whatever, and I...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/15/2007

get-tfsserverstatus.ps1 - fetch the configuration bits of your TFS server

It's currently in the collection as get-tfsstatus.ps1 which has caused confusion since it doesn't...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/10/2007

get-memberships.ps1 - programmatically finding the groups you're a member of

Forum thread was asking for this (admittedly, in C#). Since it's less typing in PowerShell, that's...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/09/2007

(More easily) search your work items!

Know-a-Code posts up a neat little VS add-in that lets you do a free-text search on your work items!...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/08/2007

Real Soon Now: System Center Operations Manager 2007

https://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/opsmgr/evaluation/default.mspx System Center Operations...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 03/04/2007

Checking the permissions assigned to team projects are all to groups

Turns out, I misunderstood the initial forum post. Their goal wasn't to make sure all the team...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/27/2007

check-tfsgroups.ps1 - PS version of that C# app

Since I got a comment complaining about the lack of PowerShell version (I did it in C# since I got...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/27/2007

Making sure your team project's groups only contain groups

I know, the title sounds a little odd. :) Got a question in the forums: i need to make sure that all...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/26/2007

SharePoint 3.0 templates do the heavy lifting for you

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/templates/default.mspx Application...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/26/2007

Admin math: PowerShell+WMI = iddqd+idkfa

https://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/02/24/displaying-usb-devices-using-wmi.aspx In the...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/25/2007

Don't shoot the messenger(s)

I had some .lnk files in my docs that pointed to some .wiq files I use a good bit. I tried to...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/22/2007

version 1.2 of Team Foundation Power Tools now available

This release includes the Check-in Policy Pack which I'll highlight mainly because I wrote all but...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/21/2007

Trace-ProcessCreation: wrapping existing code with a cmdlet

I was spammingasking around earlier this week about how to monitor process creation in windows. I...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/20/2007

PowerShell: You must think in objects

Yes, Firefox ("You must think in Russian") is one of my favorite movies :) Even now, I still find...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/20/2007

Virtual PC 2007 - ready to go!

To continue the theme, VPC 2k7 also shipped. I'm running SQL SP2 within vpc 2k7 as I write this :)...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/19/2007

SQL Server 2005 SP2 is available

A whopping 2 days after my "it'll be here soon", SQL Server 2005 SP2 has shipped....

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/19/2007

Transparency - James the anti-cheerleader

I was chatting with one of my ISV buddies (IRC, it's a wonderful thing) who happens to read my blog...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/18/2007

One of the features I just love about OneNote 2007 is the "shared notebook" feature. You can...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/18/2007

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Real Soon Now

https://blogs.msdn.com/benjones/archive/2007/02/17/sql-server-2005-sp2-is-almost-here.aspx...

Author: MSDN Archive Date: 02/17/2007

Insanely cool - .NET Micro Framework

It has nothing to do with TFS (well, at least not directly... not yet), but I've been following the...