Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 08/12/2012

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Now that's an SDK that's alive, the Live SDK v5.2

The Live SDK provides a set of controls and APIs that enable applications to integrate single sign-on (SSO) using Microsoft Account and to access data in SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Messenger.

Quick details

Version:v5.2
Date published: 8/16/2012

Language: English

LiveSDK.msi, 1.1 MB

Overview

The Live SDK contains the Live Connect APIs, which provide programmatic access to Live web services with a set of libraries that enables your apps to work with data in over 500 million user accounts in Microsoft Account, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Messenger. The Live SDK enables access to users’ identity profile info and allows your apps to:

Easily personalize your users’ experience

Take advantage of single sign-on scenarios using Microsoft Account in Windows 8 Release Preview

Upload and download photos and documents in SkyDrive

Create and update contacts, calendars, and events in Hotmail

Supported operating systems: Windows 8, Windows Phone 7.1

This SDK is a few DLL's and pointers to web resources.

https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK-for-Android

https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK-for-iOS

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826545

I guess pointing at web resources is good in that you should always be getting fresh stuff, and it makes the download and install very fast and easy. And I guess it makes it very cloud/web like (which makes sense considering what this SDK is for). It still took me a little by surprise though, but I'll get over it. And as I think about it, it does make the SDK "alive" doesn't it? Instead of old and dead on your HD? hum...

One place where the payoff for it being "live" the samples. Instead of stale code samples clogging your HD, you instead have the freshest available.

https://github.com/liveservices/LiveSDK

Note to self: Watch this, "Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server Performance in a Virtual Environment"

TechEd North America 2012 - Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server Performance in a Virtual Environment

"In this session, learn what you should be looking at within your virtual environment to ensure you are getting the performance you should out of it. This includes how to look for CPU performance issues at the host level. We also discuss the Memory Balloon drivers and what they actually do, how you should be configuring them, and why. We discuss some of the memory sharing technologies which are built into vSphere and Hyper-V and how they relate to SQL Server. We finish up with some storage configuration options to look at. #TEDBI317"

We're virtualizing more and more at my day job, including SQL Servers, so I want to watch this to better help me understand and talk the IT talk (or at least better understand the my app's DB environment).

(via SQL Server with Mr. Denny - Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server Performance in a Virtual Environment (Video))

Lucene 101 at LuceneTutorial.com

LuceneTutorial.com

Discover the Lucene full-text search library
Lucene is an open-source Java full-text search library which makes it easy to add search functionality to an application or website.
The goal of Lucene Tutorial.com is to provide a gentle introduction into Lucene.

First-time Visitors

If this is your first-time here, you most probably want to go straight to the 5 minute introduction to Lucene.

I'd call this a 101 (i.e. an introduction, survey, overview, etc) site. It doesn't go into the deep depths of Lucene (and is java targeted) but still there's some good tidbits here and its brevity is a plus in that its easy to quickly scan through. If you've just learned how to spell Lucene and want to know a bit more, this sight is for you. If you are a Lucene Master Ninja, then not so much...

(via Dominic Finn - Lucene Tutorial Site)

It's RX v2 Baby! Reactive Extensions v2.0 RTW, with details, download and the SDK too!

Reactive Extensions Team Blog - Reactive Extensions v2.0 has arrived!

"Today, we’re extremely pleased to announce the availability of Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) v2.0 RTM, aligned with the availability of Visual Studio 2012 RTM and Windows 8 RTM for MSDN subscribers. This is a major milestone for the Rx project and we hope you’ll love what you see!

In this post, we’ll focus on how to download and install the bits for use in various application frameworks. Unlike previous posts about the v2.0 pre-releases, we’ll defer further technical details to a series of follow-up posts. Nonetheless, we’ll give a brief introduction into the use of Portable Library with Rx v2.0 RTM.

Note: We’ve written this post in the typical font used for big announcements nowadays – Comic Sans – in honor of the Higgs boson discovery. In case you don’t want to partake in this celebration for the remainder of the post, click here to switch fonts.

Before we get started, make a note of the supported platforms for this release:

.NET Framework 4

.NET Framework 4.5

.NET Framework 4.5 for Windows Store apps

Silverlight 5

Windows Phone 7.5

Although this post was authored on Windows 8 using Visual Studio 2012 for screenshots, Rx can be used with Visual Studio 2010, and/or on older versions of the operating system as well. (For example, at the time of writing this post, Windows Phone development wasn’t yet publicly available in Visual Studio 2012, so that’d be a case where you have to use Visual Studio 2010 for the time being.)

Reactive Extensions for JavaScript (RxJS) users can expect the v2.0 release – including support for WinJS used in Windows Store apps – to hit the web very soon. Watch this blog for the announcement

...

..."

Reactive Extensions SDK

Reactive Extensions v2.0 SDK

Reactive Extensions (Rx) is a library to compose asynchronous and event-based programs using observable reactive data sequences and LINQ-style query operators.

Asynchronous, event-driven "reactive" programming is way too hard in today's world of development tools and frameworks. The huge amount of manual and error-prone plumbing leads to incomprehensible and hard to maintain code. As we reach out to services in the cloud, asynchronous programming is the way of life, requiring a fresh look on the problems imposed by reactive programming.

Centered around the concept of observable data sequences, Reactive Extensions (Rx) provides a framework that takes care of the hard parts of reactive event stream programming. Instead of getting lost in the jungle of asynchrony, you now can start dreaming about the endless possibilities of composing queries over event streams using familiar LINQ syntax with lots of complex event processing extensions.

For more information about these technologies, visit the Reactive Extensions (Rx) Homepage.

Microsoft Downloads - Reactive Extensions (Rx) v2.0

Reactive Extensions (Rx) is a library to compose asynchronous and event-based programs using observable reactive data sequences and LINQ-style query operators.

Quick details

Version: 2.0.20814
Date published: 8/15/2012

Language:English

Rx v2.0 SDK.msi, 2.8 MB

Overview

Asynchronous, event-driven "reactive" programming is way too hard in today's world of development tools and frameworks. The huge amount of manual and error-prone plumbing leads to incomprehensible and hard to maintain code. As we reach out to services in the cloud, asynchronous programming is the way of life, requiring a fresh look on the problems imposed by reactive programming. Centered around the concept of observable data sequences, Reactive Extensions (Rx) provides a framework that takes care of the hard parts of reactive event stream programming. Instead of getting lost in the jungle of asynchrony complexity, you now can start dreaming about the endless possibilities of composing queries over asynchronous data sources.

..."

From RP to RTM - 85 pages of Windows 8 RP to RTM porting guidance and information

Microsoft Downloads - Migrating your Release Preview app to Windows 8

"This paper provides guidance and tips for migrating code assets built using the Windows 8 Release Preview released in May 2012 to Windows 8.

Quick details

Version: 1.0
Date published: 8/15/2012

Language: English

Migrating_Release_Preview_App_to_Windows_8.docx, 187 KB

..."

From the DocX;

This paper provides guidance and tips for migrating code assets built using the Windows 8 Release Preview released in May 2012 to Windows 8. It includes porting guidance and helpful details for developers who are tasked with migrating apps from versions of Windows 8 Release Preview. It assumes that the reader is familiar with Windows 8 Release Preview.

This information applies to the following operating systems:
Windows® 8 Release Preview
Windows 8
Windows Server® 2012

The Introduction;

Welcome to the guide for migrating your Windows 8 Release Preview app to Windows 8. This document helps developers who have written apps or samples that worked with the Windows 8 Release Preview and who now must update their Metro style apps to work with Windows 8.

The goal of this guide is not to provide an exhaustive list of changes or potential issues, but rather to point out the most relevant “gotchas.” This should save you time and get you to “80%” much faster than you would have gotten there otherwise.

At the time of writing, Windows 8 was not available in its final form. As such, the guide may contain inaccuracies or inconsistencies.

And my usual thumbnail view (where you can see it's content heavy and not some marketing thing... ;)

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

May the [.Net Framework 4.5] Source be with you...

.NET Framework Blog - Announcing the release of .NET Framework 4.5 RTM - Product and Source Code

Today, we are happy to announce the availability of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. You can develop apps that will take advantage of all the great features that we have added, including new features in Windows 8. We are also announcing the availability of the .NET Framework 4.5 reference source code.

You can read more about the Visual Studio 2012 release on Jason Zander’s blog and Soma’s blog. Please visit the Visual Studio 2012 downloads page to install both products.

Improvements in the .NET Framework 4.5

We have made many improvements in the .NET Framework 4.5. Many of these advances help you write better apps with less effort, while others help you target particular Microsoft platforms. In either case, you’ll find the new features useful and relevant for the apps that you write today.

...

Releasing the source code for the .NET Framework 4.5 libraries

In addition to releasing the .NET Framework 4.5, we are pleased to announce that we are also releasing the source code for the .NET Framework libraries. While you may enjoy reading the many interesting algorithms in our product, we release the .NET Framework source primarily to improve your debugging experience. Having access to all the managed source for the code running in your process provides you with a lot more information about what your app is actually doing.

If you are new to developing with the .NET Framework, you may not know that we have released the source and rich symbols in past versions. We know that many developers rely on our source code to efficiently get to the root cause of functional and performance problems in their apps. As a result, we provide the source code concurrently with the release of .NET Framework 4.5.

This release includes the following:

Downloadable source code

Source available on-demand, deployed to the Microsoft Reference Source Server

Rich symbols (PDB files) for .NET Framework 4.5 source, deployed to the Microsoft Reference Source Server

We’ll now look at how you can use the source code and symbols.

Debugging with .NET Framework library reference source

You may be wondering what debugging with .NET Framework reference source looks like. In the example below, you will see a tool of mine calling the public Console.WriteLine method. From there, the WriteLine method calls several private managed APIs, and eventually ends with one or more platform invoke calls. You can see each of these calls in the Call Stack window. You can look at each call frame, both in terms of the source for that frame, and any locals that are available. That’s pretty useful!

...

..."

Who needs Reflector for spelunking the .Net Framework source when you've got... well... the source! :)

RX? Reactive Extensions? If only there was a site dedicated to introducing the world to it...

IntroToRX

"IntroToRx.com is the online resource for getting started with the Reactive Extensions to .Net. Originally starting life as a blog series, it has now flourished into an online book. You can read it online here via the website, or get a copy of the Kindle edition for reading offline.

While the content is complete, save some changes from my editor, the site is still under construction. Feel free however to start reading what is ready now. The targeted version is 1.0.10621.0 (NuGet: Rx-Main v1.0.11226). Note that Rx has a v2.0 Beta, which has some new cool features. Those features are largely an addition to the v1 functionality, so you are still best off learning v1 before getting too carried away with the v2 features.

While the site is getting its finishing touches, you can be assured that we are busily working away on getting content for the soon to be released version 2.0 of Rx.

..."

What's also awesome is that not only is this a great intro to Reactive Extensions, that the content is easily viewable on the web, but it's also freely available in Kindle/Mobi form too!

Sorting out what's new All-In-One Code Framework Sample Browser (hint... sorting)

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - Developers' Pain Killer - Sample Browser 5.4 Feature Update

We released a new update for Sample Browser today. You can sort sample search result by Popularity, Release Date, Title, etc. now. If you have already installed Sample Browser, please reopen the application to get the auto-update. If it’s your first time to learn about Sample Browser, you can install it from http://aka.ms/samplebrowser.

Additionally, we’d like to share a good news that the Visual Studio Extension version of Sample Browser is code complete. It’s well integrated with both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010. We will release the extension soon after Visual Studio 2012 RTMs. Please stay tuned for a bigger update.

New Feature

Sample Search Results Sorting

We heard the voice from our Sample Browser users that they want to sort the sample search results alphabetically, or by the sample release date. In this sprint of Sample Browser, the sorting feature is implemented. You can sort the search results by Popularity, Release Date, Downloads, Ratings, Title and Author.

...

..."

While note a huge new feature, sorting, it's one that I know I'll be using...

FlickrNet v3.5 Released

Wackylabs.net - FlickrNet 3.5 Release

"Just a quick post to say I’ve release version 3.5 of the FlickrNet API library.

A couple of things regarding this version and the FlickrNet library roadmap:

This will be the last version to support the old Authentication model. Going forward only oauth will be supported.

This will also be the last version to support .Net Compact Framework.

Going forward I also hope the next version will support Windows Runtime as well, at least for .Net applications (not sure about JavaScript/C++ support yet).

Download it from http://flickrnet.codeplex.com/ or get it via NuGet." [GD: Post Leached in Full]

FlickrNet API Library

Welcome to the Flickr.Net API Libraries new home on CodePlex.

The Flickr.Net API Library is a .Net Library for accessing the Flickr API. It is written entirely in C# it can be accessed from the following frameworks:

.Net Framework 2.0 and above.

.Net Compact Framework 2.0 SP1 and above.

Silverlight 3.0 and above.

Windows 7 Phone

Mono

Monotouch for iPhone

You can contact me at via the People tab or post a discussion here on codeplex if you require further help.
See my Flickr homepage at http://www.flickr.com/photos/samjudson
More Information

System Requirements (covers supported platforms)

Frequently Asked Questions

Project Documentation

Examples

Current Issues

Applications currently using FlickrNet API Library

Thanks go to some people for helping out.

..."

This is THE library (IMHO) to go to if you want to work with Flickr from .Net.

A smashing set free/open source legal documents for Designers from Smashing Magazine and Docracy

Smashing Magazine - Useful Legal Documents For Designers (PDF/DOC)

Contracts are a source of anxiety and dismay in creative work, but they exist for a good reason. A good contract ensures that you and your client have the same expectations, and protects you in case things go south. Ideally, your contract should be a combination of industry standards, legal protection and personal preferences. To help you get started, here’s a set of 10 basic agreements for a variety of common business situations that creative professionals face.

How much do you expect to be paid in advance? What happens if a payment is late? Who will own the rights to the work, and when? Contracts can seem overwhelming, but don’t need to be. Reading through these documents is an opportunity to learn from experienced designers in a collaborative setting. Furthermore, every document comes with usage statistics and can be legally signed online for free (at least if you are in the United States). All content on Docracy, the free repository of legal documents, is open source and free to take (or even improve), so please feel free to share your own examples and experience

...

..."

I thought this a cool wrap-up and resource. I mean, why pay a lawyer, or a legal document provider, if you don't have too?

Are you redistributing MSCOMCTL.OCX? Then you're going to want to deploy an update...

InstallSite Blog - If you are redistributing MSCOMCTL.OCX you may need to contact your customers

Microsoft released a critical security update for MSCOMCTL.OCX. Windows Update will replace the vulnerable version of the ActiveX control that shipped with various Microsoft products (Office, SQL Server, etc.). But if you installed a private copy of this file in your application folder, it will not be replaced by Windows Update. Instead, you should send an update to your customers, as noted in the FAQ section of Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-060:

I am a third-party application developer and I use the ActiveX control in my application. Is my application vulnerable and how do I update it?
Developers who redistribute the ActiveX control should ensure that they update the version of the ActiveX control installed with their application by downloading the update provided in this bulletin. For more information on best practices on redistributed component ... [GD: Click through for links]

If you're shipping this OCX, not referencing an already installed copy, but shipping your own, private version say side-by-side, etc, then you'll likely need to deploy this updated version.

For the Win[JS] - Blend for Visual Studio 2012 now available (and Blend for WPF/SilverLight & SketchFlow Preview too)

Blendinsider - Available Now: Blend for Visual Studio 2012

Today, I have the great pleasure to announce the latest release of Blend. In this release cycle, our big focus has been Windows 8: Blend now supports UX authoring not just for store apps written in XAML, but also for those written in HTML.

We want to make it really easy for you to create great apps for Windows 8. Therefore, we are now including Blend with Visual Studio 2012, including the free Express for Windows 8 version for authoring Win 8 store apps. With one fast download and install you get VS for your coding-centric tasks and Blend for visual authoring.

Visual Studio 2012 and Blend can be downloaded from MSDN today if you’re an MSDN Subscriber. You can also download the free Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8, which includes Blend, or free trial versions of Visual Studio 2012 with Blend today.

...

Completely new in Blend is visual authoring for HTML and CSS, especially for Windows 8 store apps.

Blend is a unique, innovative and exciting authoring tool with rich visual tools. It gives you great tools to create, edit and diagnose CSS, supporting some of the latest CSS standards, including CSS Grid, Gradients, Transitions, and media queries. Blend creates clean and standard-conformant markup.

It also is designed to handle app UX that makes heavy use of JavaScript to dynamically create and manipulate DOM elements. Blend constantly runs your code on the design surface, so that content generated by JavaScript can be displayed and edited accurately. Using Interactive Mode you can even interact with the app on the design surface and bring it into states that are not reachable via markup at all.

In summary, Blend for HTML makes visual authoring of HTML, CSS and WinJS productive, fast, and fun again.

..."

Announcing Blend + SketchFlow Preview for Visual Studio 2012

"We are making available a preview version of Blend + SketchFlow Preview for Visual Studio 2012. This release includes support for WPF version 3.5/4.0/4.5, Silverlight 4.0/5.0, SketchFlow, and Blend tools for Windows 8. This preview release will run on Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, and Windows 8 Server.

WPF, Silverlight, and SketchFlow applications can be developed on any of the operating systems listed above. Windows Store apps authored in HTML and XAML require the Windows 8 client operating system. This preview also includes Blend SDKs for WPF 3.5/4.0/4.5 and Silverlight 4.0/5.0 platforms.

This is a preview version for evaluation only and none of the platforms contain a go-live license. You should use other released versions of Blend for production work. The table below lists the Blend Platforms and the version of Blend you should use for production applications.

..."

Good to see SketchFlow get some love (and that Blend hasn't dropped WPF/SilverLight support...)

WiX rounds the curve and joins Outercurve

RobMensching.com /Blog because setup isn't just xcopy - Outercurve Foundation and WiX toolset together, at last.

The WiX toolset was Microsoft's first Open Source project released back in April, 2004. Being first meant we were guinea pigs for a number of new legal and business processes. By 2009 Microsoft had learned a lot about these processes and created the Outercurve Foundation to encapsulate them. Today the WiX toolset finally moves from Microsoft to join Outercurve. Why now? What changes? Let's see if I can answer those questions.

Why now?

Since the creation of the Outercurve Foundation, people occasionally asked why the WiX toolset didn't move. There wasn't a really great answer beyond, "We didn't really need to." The original processes in Microsoft were supporting our needs well enough. Well enough until the end of last year when the legal team supporting us said, "It's been fun guys but we don't really want to manage the WiX toolset assignment agreements any longer."

That meant it was time to move to Outercurve. Of course, it is never that simple when you have legal processes involved. So the process took time. I'm just happy we got this done before WiX v3.6 was complete and WiX v3.7 available.

What changes?

Right now, the WiX toolset's copyright changes. The header on top of all the licensed source files and the logo message displayed by the command-line tools will now say "Copyright Outercurve Foundation" instead of "Copyright Microsoft Corporation". There is also a new email address to request an assignment requests agreement (send email to wix-devs@lists.sourceforge.net to get started).

..."

Outercurve Foundation Blog - WiX joins the Outercurve Foundation

"I am very happy to announce the WiX toolset has been contributed to the Outercurve Foundation. The project has been a special case in Microsoft for a long time. WiX was the first open source project begun at Microsoft. We began as an internal ‘community project’ in 1999 and released WiX as the first true open source project from Microsoft in 2004.

The WiX toolset creates Windows Installer packages (.MSI, .MSM, .MSP, etc.) from XML source code. The toolset integrates seamlessly into typical developer processes via command-line tools and Visual Studio integration. The project also extends the Windows Installer to support install applications on IIS, SQL, and other Microsoft platforms. The primary goal of the project is to promote best practices for creating installation packages on Windows.

Since the 2004 release, the WiX toolset has become recognized as one of the best ways to create installation packages for Windows. Today there are 10,000+ downloads every month. WiX is one of few open source projects shipping with multibillion-dollar software. It’s used in Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Visual Studio and many others inside and outside of Microsoft. Developers are our implementers. The project has an active user mailing list with thousands of participants.

..."

It's great to see continued life and support for WiX. With VS2012 RTM coming to MSDN today (August 15, 2012), I believe there is going to a renewed interest is deployment/setup projects (since you know the VS Deployment Project type has been dropped from VS2012, right?)....

"Visual & Installer" Free Visual Studio Add-in for creating NSIS and Inno Setup installers

An end-to-end WiX example...
Get your WiX fix now on WiXToolset.org

WiX 3.5 released (Think “IIS7, VS2010, plus bunches of bugs squashed” release)
WiX Resources – Some help up the learning curve
Stick a fork in it, WiX (Windows Installer XML) 3.0 is done…
WiX (as seen in VS2010) Documentation CTP – What is WiX, how to use it, and how to extend it.
More WiX Mixing (WiX, Votive and VS2005/8)
WiX Your Way to Installer Happiness
WixTrim - WiX Designer (with C# 2 Source)
Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset has released as Open Source on SourceForge.net

Monday, August 13, 2012

Just pointing out that sharing with Windows Phone 7.1(5) is now easier with the Microsoft SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone 7.1

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone 7.1

This SDK installs SharePoint client libraries and templates for Windows Phone 7.1

Version: 1
Date published: 8/13/2012

Language: English

spdxmobile.msi, 1.0 MB
spdxmobile_x64.msi, 1.0 MB

Overview

The SDK installs Windows Phone CSOM libraries for Windows Phone, SharePoint Auth library for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Project Templates, which can be used to build Windows Phone 7.1 Applications against SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2010

System requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Phone 7.1 Developer Tools are required.

..."

Merge with with the Corporate Store/Portal coming with Windows Phone 8 and I think you've really got something (assuming app's built with this works with WP8... :| )

Java hates TFS 2012? NOPE! Team Foundation Server 2012 Software Development Kit for Java (Preview)

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Software Development Kit for Java - Preview

"The preview release of the Team Foundation Server SDK for Java includes documentation, samples and redistributable components to help you develop software products that integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.

Version: 11.0.0
Date published: 8/13/2012

Language: English

license.html, 12 KB
TFS-SDK-11.0.0.zip, 18.2 MB

The preview release of the Team Foundation Server SDK for Java includes documentation, samples and redistributable components to help you develop software products that integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012. By downloading the SDK from the link below you agree to the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Software Development Kit for Java license terms.

The SDK contains the following components:

Redistributable library (jar file) containing the TFS API’s

Redistributable native code libraries required by the SDK for Java

API Documentation in Javadoc format

Check-in policy code sample

Custom work item control code sample

Console application code sample

Code snippets

For more information and help in using the SDK or the associated code samples then please see the Team Foundation Server - Eclipse and Cross Platform forum.

..."

Where would you use something like this? Looking at the java support in git-ts, TFS gets GIT with git-tf, maybe there, I'm guessing?

TFS gets GIT with git-tf

Brian Keller - Announcing kanban and git-tf for TFS

"...

The second new capability is designed to help combine the local repository offered by Git with the integration application lifecycle management solution offered by Team Foundation Server.

Git-tf is a new cross-platform bridge which was announced today and allows developers to combine the local repository capabilities of Git with the integrated application lifecycle management tooling of Team Foundation Server.

Now you can use a Git repository locally, and when you're ready to, check in code to TFS. You can even continue to take advantage of integration between work items (such as bugs and requirements) in TFS when you want to enable end-to-end traceability of the relationship between your work and your code changes. This bridge is a cross-platform tool built with Java, so it runs on many operating systems, including OS X, Linux, and Windows. This means that you can use Git clients (such as Xcode) and maintain the ability to check code into Team Foundation Server.

..."

Brian Harry’s blog - Announcing Git Integration with TFS

"Distributed Version Control (DVCS) has a growing following. It enables a set of workflows that can be very handy and Git is an increasingly popular DVCS solution. Today, we are announcing Git-tf, a solution that enables you to work locally with a Git repo – edit, commit, revert, branch, merge, etc. and then “sync up” with a central TFS repository. In this way, you can have the best of both DVCS and TFS.

Git-tf works great in hybrid teams. You may have a TFS project that’s been running for a while. Most of your dev team is using our Visual Studio or Eclipse integration and perfectly happy. At the same time, you’ve got a few people who want or need to use Git. Maybe they are the XCode developers on the team and they like the native Git integration in the XCode IDE. Git-tf allows them to work with XCode’s Git integration and collaborate with other team members through TFS.

The integration takes the form of a new command line tool called “Git-tf”. Git-tf works with a standard Git install and getting started is super easy. Just visit our download page and checkout Git-TF_Getting_Started.html. Installing Git-tf is as simple as unzipping the Zip. At the moment Git-tf won’t work with Team Foundation Service – it will only work with an on premises TFS server – either 2008, 2010 or 2012. However we are working on adding support for Team Foundation Service and I expect it will be available in the next sprint deployment.

..."

Channel 9 Visual Studio Blog - Announcing git-tf: Combining the local repository of Git with the integrated ALM of TFS

Git-tf is a new cross-platform bridge which was announced today and allows developers to combine the local repository capabilities of Git with the integrated application lifecycle management tooling of Team Foundation Server.

Now you can use a Git repository locally, and when you're ready to, check in code to TFS. You can even continue to take advantage of integration between work items (such as bugs and requirements) in TFS when you want to enable end-to-end traceability of the relationship between your work and your code changes. This bridge is a cross-platform tool built with Java, so it runs on many operating systems, including OS X, Linux, and Windows. This means that you can use Git clients (such as Xcode) and maintain the ability to check code into Team Foundation Server.

In this video, Matthew Mitrik, a program manager on the Team Foundation Server team, shows off this new capability.

Download: http://aka.ms/git-tf.
Source Code: http://gittf.codeplex.com/

..."

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Git-TF for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012

Git-TF is a set of cross-platform, command line tools that facilitate sharing of changes between TFS and Git.

Quick details

Version: 1.0
Date published: 8/13/2012

Language: English

Git-TF_GettingStarted.html, 17 KB
git-tf-1.0.0.20120809.zip, 12.5 MB
license.html, 24 KB
ThirdPartyNotices.html, 30 KB

Overview

Git-TF is a set of cross-platform, command line tools that facilitate sharing of changes between TFS and Git. These tools allow a developer to use a local Git repository, and configure it to share changes with a TFS server. Using the tools, changes made in TFS can be pulled into a local Git repository, and changes made in the Git repository can be checked in to TFS. These tools can be used by individuals or teams collaborating using Git. By downloading the tools from the link below, you accept the Git-TF for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 license agreement.

Git-TF: Getting Started Guide

Git-TF V1.0

About the tools

Git-TF is a set of command line tools that facilitate the use of a local Git repository with TFS. These tools make it easy to clone sources from TFS, fetch updates from TFS, and to update TFS with changes committed locally in Git.

Release notes

The shelve command is still in development. The command should not be used with production data until it is updated in a future release.

Installation

Supported Platforms

Git-TF is supported on the following platforms:

Windows 7 (x86, x64), Windows Vista, Windows XP SP3

Linux with GLIBC 2.3 to 2.11 (x86, x86_64, PowerPC)

Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.6 (PowerPC, Intel)

Solaris 8, 9, 10 (SPARC, x86, x86-64)

AIX 5.2 to 6.1 (POWER)

HP-UX 11i v1 to v3 (PA-RISC, Itanium)

Supported TFS Versions

Git-TF is supported for use with the following versions of TFS (servers):

Team Foundation Server 2012

Team Foundation Server 2010

Team Foundation Server 2008

Prerequisites

Any of the following versions of the Java runtime (latest versions available from http://www.java.com):

Sun Java™ 1.5 to 6, or IBM Java™ 1.5 to 6 on Microsoft Windows

Apple Java™ 1.5 to 6 on Mac OS X

Sun Java™ 1.5 to 6 on Linux or Solaris

IBM Java™ 1.5 to 6 on Linux or AIX

HP Java™ 1.5 to 6 on HP-UX

It is recommended that the latest version of Git is installed as well. It is not strictly needed to use Git-TF, but it will be useful in working with the local repository created by the tools. Information about the latest Git downloads can be found on: http://git-scm.com/downloads

Installing Git-TF

Extract the contents of Git-TF-Release-Preview.zip to a folder on your local machine, i.e. C:\git-tf on Windows, or /user/git-tf on Mac/Linux.

Add the path where you extracted Git-TF (i.e. C:\git-tf) to your PATH environment variable.

Add the path where java.exe is installed (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin) to your PATH environment variable.

I've been hearing some rumbling about TFS and GIT, I wonder if this was it? Anyway, this the best of both worlds or a Franken-beast? I'm going to say that I'm glad to see this and I 'm glad to see Microsoft and the TFS team trying to embrace DVCS.

Oh, you did catch that the source for git-ts is available (well, is in the processing of becoming available) too, right? http://gittf.codeplex.com/ I actually think that's the coolest thing about this...

No cons with these 18 free icon font sets

Six Revisions - Free Icon Fonts for Web User Interfaces

This roundup features 18 free icon fonts that can be used in your commercial projects. The icon fonts in this post are perfect for your app user interfaces (UIs).

What are Icon Fonts?

Icon fonts are font files that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters.

Icon fonts are like dingbat fonts, but are designed specifically for UIs. Icon fonts, just like other web fonts, use the CSS @font-face rule to display icons in web browsers.

And because they’re treated like web fonts, icon fonts:

Have great cross-browser support (even IE6, for example, can render web fonts using the @font-face rule)

Can be scaled on-the-fly if the user adjusts their web browser settings

Can be rendered with different colors

Can embody font- and text-related CSS properties (like text-shadow and gradient)

See icon fonts in action by visiting my friend Chris Coyier’s icon fonts demo page.

To learn how to use icon fonts, read this tutorial on CSS-Tricks: HTML for Icon Font Usage.

Free Icon Fonts

Below are 18 excellent icon free fonts that have licenses that permit commercial use. I strongly recommend reading the license terms and conditions of any freebie you get online, just to be sure that you can use the free resource for your particular purpose.

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Who needs these when we've got dingbats? Well I do, that's for sure (and who are you calling a dingbat? ;)

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Free Big Data eBook of the Day, "Mining of Massive Datasets"

Mining of Massive Datasets

The book has now been published by Cambridge University Press. The publisher is offering a 20% discount to anyone who buys the hardcopy Here. By agreement with the publisher, you can still download it free from this page. Cambridge Press does, however, retain copyright on the work, and we expect that you will obtain their permission and acknowledge our authorship if you republish parts or all of it. We are sorry to have to mention this point, but we have evidence that other items we have published on the Web have been appropriated and republished under other names. It is easy to detect such misuse, by the way, as you will learn in Chapter 3.

Download Version 1.0

The following materials are equivalent to the published book, with errata corrected to July 4, 2012. It has been frozen as we revise the book. The evolving book can be downloaded as "Version 1.1" below.

Download the Complete Book (340 pages, approximately 2MB) [GD: Click through for all the downloads]

Download chapters of the book:

Preface and Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Data Mining
Chapter 2 Large-Scale File Systems and Map-Reduce
Chapter 3 Finding Similar Items
Chapter 4 Mining Data Streams
Chapter 5 Link Analysis
Chapter 6 Frequent Itemsets
Chapter 7 Clustering
Chapter 8 Advertising on the Web
Chapter 9 Recommendation Systems
Index

Download Version 1.1

Below is a draft, evolving version of the MMDS book. We have added Jure Leskovec as a coauthor, and at this point added only one new chapter, on mining large graphs. However, we will be making available new chapters on large-scale machine-learning algorithms and dimensionality reduction, as well as expanding Chapter 2 on map-reduce algorithm design.

Download the Complete Book (395 pages, approximately 2.4MB)

Download chapters of the book:

Preface and Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Data Mining
Chapter 2 Large-Scale File Systems and Map-Reduce
Chapter 3 Finding Similar Items
Chapter 4 Mining Data Streams
Chapter 5 Link Analysis
Chapter 6 Frequent Itemsets
Chapter 7 Clustering
Chapter 8 Advertising on the Web
Chapter 9 Recommendation Systems
Chapter 10 Mining Social-Network Graphs
Index

From the Preface of v1.1

This book evolved from material developed over several years by Anand Rajaraman and Jeff Ullman for a one-quarter course at Stanford. The course CS345A, titled “Web Mining,” was designed as an advanced graduate course, although it has become accessible and interesting to advanced undergraduates. When Jure Leskovec joined the Stanford faculty, we reorganized the material considerably. He introduced a new course CS224W on network analysis and added material to CS345A, which was renumbered CS246. The three authors also introduced a large-scale data-mining project course, CS341. The book now contains material taught in all three courses.

What the Book Is About
At the highest level of description, this book is about data mining. However, it focuses on data mining of very large amounts of data, that is, data so large it does not fit in main memory. Because of the emphasis on size, many of our examples are about the Web or data derived from the Web. Further, the book takes an algorithmic point of view: data mining is about applying algorithms to data, rather than using data to “train” a machine-learning engine of some sort. The principal topics covered are:

1. Distributed file systems and map-reduce as a tool for creating parallel algorithms that succeed on very large amounts of data.
2. Similarity search, including the key techniques of minhashing and locality-sensitive hashing.
3. Data-stream processing and specialized algorithms for dealing with data that arrives so fast it must be processed immediately or lost.
4. The technology of search engines, including Google’s PageRank, link-spam detection, and the hubs-and-authorities approach.
5. Frequent-itemset mining, including association rules, market-baskets, the A-Priori Algorithm and its improvements.
6. Algorithms for clustering very large, high-dimensional datasets.
7. Two key problems for Web applications: managing advertising and recommendation systems.
8. Algorithms for analyzing and mining the structure of very large graphs,especially social-network graphs.

If you're really big into big data, or wanna-be, this eBook looks to be just for you.

(via Jason Haley - Interesting Finds: August 12, 2012)

Check out XFiles... ["Using XPath to Navigate the File System"]

CodeProject - Using XPath to Navigate the File System

Introduction

This article has two goals:

It shows how to make your own XPathNavigator implementation and use it to evaluate XPath expressions and apply XSLT transformation to the structures, not intended to be used this way

It presents the new alternative way to work with files and folders that some people may consider useful

What is XPathNavigator

XPathNavigator is the system abstract class, that implements XPath document model and provides means of navigating through XML nodes, and evaluating XPath expressions. Unlike XmlNode or XNode, XPathNavigator is a cursor, that may point to any node in the XML tree and be moved to another node. XPathNavigator is also used as an input for XslCompiledTransform, and therefore any implementation of the XPathNavigator can be transformed with an XSLT stylesheet.

XPathNavigator implementations exist for all XML models in .NET, including XmlDocument and LINQ to XML. Generally an instance of an XPathNavigator inheritor can be created for classes that implement IXPathNavigable interface. This interface contains a single method - CreateNavigator. Classes XmlNode and XPathDocument (a special fast model that only provides read-only access via XPathNavigator model) implement IXPathNavigable. However this is not always the case. The newest library for working with XML - LINQ to XML - allows creation of XPathNavigator with extension methods.

It's worth mentioning that none of the system-integrated implementations of the XPathNavigator are public.

How to implement XPathNavigator

XPathNavigator contains 116 public members, 112 of which can be overridden. Good news that only 20 of them are abstract, i.e. must be implemented.

Here they are:

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When I first saw this I wasn't sure if it was insane or inspired. I'm still not sure about that, but I am sure that I think this is pretty awesome.

MAX_PATH got you down? Zoom over to the Zeta Long Paths project

CodeProject - Zeta Long Paths

"A .NET library to access files and directories with more than 260 characters length

Introduction

This article describes a library that provides several classes and functions to perform basic functions on file paths and folder paths that are longer than the "MAX_PATH" limit of 260 characters.

Background

All .NET functions I came across that access the file system are limited to file paths and folder paths with less than 260 characters. This includes most (all?) of the classes in the System.IO namespace like e.g. the System.IO.FileInfo class.

Since I was in the need to actually access paths with more than 260 characters, I searched for a solution. Fortunately a solution exists; basically you have to P/Invoke Win32 functions that allow a special syntax to prefix a file and allow it then to be much longer than the 260 characters (about 32,000 characters).

The Library

So I started writing a very thin wrapper for the functions I required to work on long file names.

These resources helped me finding more:

"Long Paths in .NET" on the BCL Team Blog

pinvoke.net for finding signatures of Win32 functions

Using long path syntax with UNC, MSDN

I started by using several functions from the BCL Team blog postings and added the functions they did not cover but which I needed in my project.

Currently there are the following classes:

ZlpFileInfo - A class similar to System.IO.FileInfo that wraps functions to work on file paths

ZlpDirectoryInfo - A class similar to System.IO.DirectoryInfo that wraps functions to work on folder paths

ZlpIOHelper - A set of static functions to provide similar features as the ZlpFileInfo and ZlpDirectoryInfo class but in a static context

ZlpPathHelper - A set of static functions similar to System.IO.Path that work on paths

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Do we need another Long Path/MAX_PATH library? Sigh, yes, we do. Because we're still dealing with long path issues and we still don't good support for them in the OS or .Net framework. Granted I deal with this more often than many due to my day job, but still I've been seeing more and more comments/issues/problems/etc due to max_path issues.

Powering into RoboCopy with the PowerShell RoboCopy clone, RoboPowerCopy (which even includes Long Path support...)

The Long Path for the BCL Team
Introduction of the BCL CodePlex project (code samples, previews, prototypes, etc from the BCL team) – Includes “Long Path” library direct from the BCL Team (think “Breaking out of MAX_PATH”)

Subsytem for Unix (SUA) Utilities and SDK For Windows 2008 and Vista SP1
The PInvoke tool you've been looking for all this time... the "PInvoke Interop Assistant"
Using GetFileAttributes to Test for File Existence
Unicode Path Fun...

Removing Source Control bindings from Visual Studio Projects Utility

Saveen Reddy's blog - A Tool to Remove Source Control Bindings from Visual Studio Solutions and Projects

"Ever need to share your Visual Studio solution or projects with someone?

You ZIP up a folder with your code and send it. If your project is under source control – one that is integrated with Visual Studio – you will likely hear from the recipient of your code. They will be complaining that the get weird warnings from Visual Studio when they load the solution and projects.

What we need is a simple way to strip out all the source control bindings before we distribute the code.

Fortunately I spend a few hours creating one. It is called VSUnbindSourceControl and it is now on codeplex: https://vsunbindscc.codeplex.com/

More details are at the CodePlex Project, but the short summary of usage is this.

Copy your solution to a new directory (because the tool does modify files)

Run this command: VSUnbindSourceControl.exe d:\myfolder

..."

I find it interesting how this kind of utility seems to come around every so often (Sounds like a good candidate for inclusion in VS or as a power tool...). I first highlighted a like utility back in 2005 (almost to the day, which is kind of weird), Clean Sources Plus Utility. Then again in 2006, SolutionZipper - VS2005 Addin to Clean and Zip in One Step and more recently in 2011, Sharing your Visual Studio Projects cleanly with CleanProject.

Anyway, options are good and things, and VS versions, so another choice is okay. Plus being source available is nice... :)