Tips 'n Tricks - Scrum Bug

Accessing (private) GitHub resources from a Codespace

If you want to access packages or repositories from another organization though, you're out of luck. Even though you can request access to repositories outside of your organization or account, GitHub won't grant you that access when the Codespace starts.

Azure Pipelines

VSBuild task fails on self-hosted Azure Pipelines Agent

Today I got this baffling error while trying to run one of the few pipelines I own that requires a self-hosted agent. 2023-09-18T13:24:55.1897667Z ##[section]Starting: VSBuild 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042232Z ============================================================================== 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042611Z Task : Visual Studio build 2023-09-18T13:24:55.2042705Z Description : Build with MSBuild and

git

Tips & tricks: Git under WSL and windows

Since the introduction of WSL I've started to rely on it more and more, but there are still a few quirks when dealing with multiple environments that access the same repo on disk.

git

Use Visual Studio 2022 as merge tool in Tower

Tower recently released a major upgrade of it's already outstanding Git Client. Microsoft shipped Visual Studio 2022 not too long ago either. This is how you integrate the two.

Tips 'n Tricks

Automatically add referral tag to URLs with Clipboard Fusion

Recently Microsoft introduced the Docs & Learn program. You, the MVP and content creator, get a unique identifier to add to any url linking to a number of Microsoft websites, and they automatically track the engagement you generate.

Tips 'n Tricks

Enable your custom background on Microsoft Teams

Microsoft just shipped an update for Microsoft Teams. It has the option to insert one of a set of predefined images. And a hidden one to add your own!

BitLocker

Decrypt BitLocker OS drive of corrupted windows installation

I had an issue in Windows which prevented me from booting from my SSD drive in my laptop. In order to install a fresh copy of Windows to that drive without losing any data stored on it, I needed to decrypt the drive. To decrypt a disk, you must be logged on... I used Windows-to-go in the end.

Windows 10

Like what you see on Windows Spotlight? Save it!

if you've turned on Windows Spotlight you'll get a new lockscreen background every now and then. Some of these are just wonderful and you may want to set them as your wallpaper (like me).

Tips 'n Tricks

Add :8080 to your TFS 2017 bindings after upgrading to SSL

Because TFS 2017 allows authentication with Personal Access Tokens (PAT) it's recommended to upgrade to SSL if you were still on port 80. The installer will even help with the configuration and can add a redirect from port :80 to :443. It doesn't add a a

Visual Studio 2017

Force uninstall Visual Studio 2017

If you, like me, are stuck trying to upgrade Visual Studio 2017, then you may only get unblocked by removing everything and starting afresh. Since Visual Studio 2017 is still in Release Candidate and not final, this is something we may have to deal with from time to time. But

Visual Studio 2015

Solve basic auth proxy issues with Nuget, Visual Studio and Xamarin (hack)

When you're using Visual Studio behind a Basic Authenticaton proxy, you may run into issues restoring Nuget packages. While I've never found a real solution for the issue, and trust me I've tried quite a few workarounds like the ones listed here [http://stackoverflow.

Azure DevOps

Reference specific line of a file in the Code hub

One of the features of GitHub I use quite often is the ability to right-click any line number to create a link to that specific file on the exact line. It can eb useful when submitting issues or when providing a link to a piece of sample code. While not

TFS 2015

Publish Build Tasks to TFS 2015 without configuring Basic Auth on the server

When you want to publish build tasks to a TFS 2015 server, you need a Basic Authentication enabled endpoint. Unless your server is configured with SSL, this is a major security concern. Until now the guidance I received was to setup a second Application Tier, configure it with Basic Auth

Azure DevOps

Add additional fields to "Edit Test Case using Grid" option in VS Team Services

If you're bulk-creating, importing or editing test cases in Visual Studio Team Services, you're probably aware of the "Edit as Grid" option, which opens your test case in a spreadsheet like layout for bulk editing: Not many people know that you can extend this

Windows 10

Mount OneDrive as a Network Drive

Ever wanted to upload a lot of data to OneDrive without having to sync that folder to your local machine (updating my music library is pretty hard, as to put data into the folder, I first need to sync it locally). Ever wanted to download a few specific files from

Visual Studio 2012

Visual Studio Tip: How to always launch the debugger under a different user profile

One of my team members shared his debug workflow for a set of executables that manipulate Exchange and CRM through webservice calls. This tool always needs to run in the context of a specific service account, even when debugging and testing against the development environment. A practice that needs changing,

Windows 8

Windows 8 - Remote desktop tips and tricks

If you're using Remote desktop a lot, you'll find that a few things are changing with Windows 8. Here are a few tips and tricks to make your life easier: * On the Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise version the classic desktop version of Remote desktop comes