GuruStop.NET

Intro…

Last week I had to re-install Windows. I haven’t done it in a while, so, had to remember all those “1 time” tips I do after reinstall. For example, downloading SQL Server Developer Edition before Visual Studio to get the full Management Studio. Another example, setting Visual Studio to pin to the Start menu, and configuring it for UAC.

The Problem

In the very first year of Windows 7, I used to have many problems with UAC on and always disabled it, later, things started to get better and it became my normal config to leave it on. One problem that remained is that if you have a program set to always “Run AS Administrator”, if this program has associated files (can open files with certain extensions if you click the files), you no longer can open those files directly.

So, like many, I do pin visual studio to the Start menu

I also need to set it to “Run As Administrator” in so many times (for stuff with built-in IIS, not much is on IIS Express).

I right click the shortcut, go to “Compatibility” tab, and check “Run this program as an administrator”.

Lately I have been doing more stuff on the Console as getting to Ruby and messing a bit with Git and stuff.

Generally speaking the default Windows Command Prompt is really fine for my needs, but I sure would love to see more possibilities. PowerShell was a great scripting / tooling addition but not much of “Editor” / “Environment” improvement. PowerShell ISE (integrated Scripting Environment) is really so nice and powerful, but it doesn’t feel exactly like my usual Console. I tried Console2 and was really impressed with how similar and different it is in the same time.

Surely, it didn’t mean I have to lose PowerShell features in there!

Get Console2

Just grab it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/files/console-devel/.

By the time of writing v 2.0 was the latest. I just went to that folder and got the latest Zip in there. Yeah. No install, just a Zip file, so, you may need to make a shortcut for it on your own and / or place it in somewhere that’s already in your Windows ENVIRONMENT variables.

Find the Path To PowerShell

The way I did it was go to Start menu, type in PowerShell in the search box, and right click the PowerShell icon, and choose Properties.

About EgyGeeks Podcast

If you don’t know what is EgyGeeks Podcast, I highly recommend checking out my first blog post about it.

In brief, EgyGeeks is an usergroup of many developers (mainly Egyptian .NET geeks, but not only) that started with some online gatherings instead of usual offline ones, and now starting to add podcasts to the game (In Arabic)…

Personal Blah Blah Blah Part…

If you remember that I haven’t made it to the first “published” episode (maybe some day we decide to publish the very first secret episode, who knows!), well, I was lucky enough to make it to this one though!

Podcast’s 2nd Episode: Joel’s Test

This time the topic is Joel’s test. If I remember correctly, It was @AmrElDib’s idea. Nice one.

Joel’s test is a set of 12 questions that try to be a general standard scale for software companies, especially to use for those considering offers for different companies and want to evaluate how professional is the work in there. They are advised to ask those question to the companies.

Today I was supposed to deploy some changes on company static website made by web designer. The website source is hosted using SubVersion (SVN). I thought it’ll be great if I can export just the changes he did with their folder structure and without asking him to do anything extra, and deploy that.

Here are the steps using TortoiseSVN:

1. Right Click The working, choose TortoiseSVN => Show Log
   
2. Since he used multiple revisions, I selected the those revisions, right clicked, and chose “Compare revisions”
   
3. Selected all files, right click, and choose “Export selection to…”
   
4. Simply choose the destination folder from the folder selection dialog that comes up, and here we go.

That was very quick hint, but hopefully helpful to someone. I’m sure there must be other ways to do it also BTW, but this was the quickest to try with an empty head.

In VS 2010, extension manager is part of a nice new generation of VS plug-in system. One of the great features of it is how it can go online talk to Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery website to retrieve list of extensions there, automatically discovering updates for installed extensions, and allowing me to add new extensions directly from within Visual Studio.

The Problem:

However, in my company I could not take benefit of that for long time. Reason is, the company uses Blue Coat proxy, with some active directory based authentication. We cannot access the Internet unless we use that proxy, no direct connection allowed, most other proxies are also blocked (by blocking the common proxies port 8080 and many other common ports).

Although I have the proxy set in Internet Explorer, and I have the username/password stored in my Windows Credentials store  (Start–> Run–> Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsCredential Manager) -since my primary work laptop and user account on it are not part of the company domain-, Visual Studio did not seem to be able to use that.

Anything that requires online communication not directly using the browser is not working. The main feature missed by this is Extensions Manager integration with the Visual Studio Gallery online.