CodeClimber

One of the new cool features of the new Orcas TFS is the Team Build Job, which adds a kind of Continuous Integration to Team Foundation Server. Jim Lamb, PM of this new feature, just released a Vista Sidebar Gadget that lets you monitor the builds happening on one server. The screenshot at the right looks pretty familiar to me. This gadget doesn't have an undocked view with more details about all the projects, but uses the flyout to show more details of a specific project then you click on the project name. You can look at a preview of...

Another weekend, another release: today is the turn of my CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar, which hits version number 0.9.5. This new version is very close to what I've planned for the final 1.0: a lightweight replacement of CCTray that runs on the Vista Sidebar. The main feature introduced with this version is the autoscrolling of the projects when in docked mode: if you enable this new feature, the list of all the projects you are monitoring will automatically scroll and loop through all the projects. I also added some improvements in the usability and error reporting: Don't prompt users for project already...

In the last days I've been working on my Vista Sidebar Gadget with the intent to make it v1.0 before going back to Italy at the beginning of August. I'd like to make version 1 of my gadget a replacement for the CCTray application that ships with CruiseControl.NET: last month I silently released version 0.9 with the possibility to force a build on the server and now I'm trying to add the possibility to play a sound when a build breaks or, even better, launch a batch file. I'm also adding small enhancements to the UI, like the ones requested by...

UPDATE: the latest version of the CC.NET Monitor Gadget for Vista Sidebar is v0.9.5: read more about it in 0.9.5 release notes. Since many people asked for it, I just released a new version of the CruiseControl.NET Monitoring Gadget for Vista Sidebar adding the most requested feature: the Force Build button. Now, in the undocked view, you can see a nice orange button on the right. Push that button to force a build for the project and the button will turn gray, meaning that the project is checking for updated or is already building. This the list of changes: ...

The guys at Mindscape just started a series of video blog posts: BrainDump. Every now and then they will be interviewing a member of the .NET development community in New Zealand. Last week they knocked at my door, and I was very pleased to be part of the first episode of their BrainDump, speaking about my involvement with Subtext and my last project, the CCNET monitor gadget for Vista. Watch the video here: BrainDump #1 - Simone Chiaretta (EDIT: they removed the silverlight player, so here is a link to YouTube) Now I understand how Phil Haack felt when he was interviewed at Mix07. Being interviewed...

This weekend I decided to try Camtasia to record a screencast to show you how my CC.NET monitoring gadget looks like before you decide to install it on your Vista computer. But also to show people that don't have Vista what they are missing. The screencast shows how to add the gadget to the sidebar, how to configure it to monitor 2 different build servers choosing only the projects you are interested in and how it looks like both in the docked and undocked view. This is my first screencast, and also the first time I record my voice, so,...

UPDATE: The latest version of CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar is v0.9.5: read more about it on the CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar v0.9.5 release notes. A few days ago I announced the beta phase for version 0.8 of my CC.NET Monitoring gadget, and now I think it's ready for the release. Project opensourced on Google Code I also created to host the project on Google Code, so now I've a central repository to store the source code, the files released, the documentation and also a small issue tracking system. I already added 2 pages on the project wiki: CC.NET Monitor Features ...

UPDATE: version 0.8 released: read more on CruiseControl.NET Monitoring Gadget for Vista Sidebar 0.8 Two weeks ago I released the first version of my CC.NET Monitor Gadget for Vista Sidebar, and I received a lot of feedbacks on what I should put into the next version of the gadget: the possibility to choose which projects to display, an automatic scrolling of the list of projects, a button to force the build on the server, a global indicator to be able to see at a glance if any of the projects are failing. So during the last weeks I worked on these feature...

UPDATE: the latest version of that gadget is now 0.9.5. Read more on the 0.9.5 release notes. I just released the new version of my CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar (why is everybody giving such long names to software?): version number 0.7 This version adds the most requested feature: the ability to specify which project to display. Now in the settings page you can specify the "Display Mode": All projects Only failing projects Only specified projects All but the specified projects and then there is a text...

I just went through the process of submitting my CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar to the Windows Live Gallery. Here is the link to the CC.NET Monitor page. Technorati tags: microsoft live, ccnet monitor, gadget, vista, sidebar

The CruiseControl.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar is the first "real" Vista Sidebar gadget I developed, so I want to share 2 of the problems I encountered during the development. The first problem was that the XmlHttpRequest always returned "undefined" (which is the null in javascript) for its responseXML property. I was reading an xml file, why did I receive a null instead of the XML Document contained into the response? The XmlStatusReport.aspx file that contains the report for the build server doesn't have an xml content-type (not text/xml, application/xml or with a .xml extension) but has, as any other html page, a text/html content-type....

UPDATE: The latest version of CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar is v0.9.5: read more about it on the CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar v0.9.5 release notes. Yesterday I released the first version (number 0.5) of my CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar. But I forgot some debugging stuff in the release. So, in order to avoid confusion, I bumped up the version number to 0.6. Here is the new version: CC.NET Monitor for Vista Sidebar 0.6 Release notes: Removed an hard-coded url I used for debugging Removed the double cycle I used to test the scrolling of the gadget with more project Thank you to Thomas and Steve for reporting...