Backgroud:
I am a board member of the Fox Valley .Net User Group. We are starting a Special Interest Group to do a software project from start to finish. We want to focus on having senior .Net members help junior .Net members learn tools and technologies. We want to learn how to use or better use the following software:
Team Foundation Server 2008 - Very Important to Learn
MS Build - Very Important to Learn
Visual Studio Team Systems 2008 - Very Important to Learn
SQL Server 2008 - Somewhat Important to Learn
My Plan:
Create different virtual machines for TFS 2008, Build Server, SQL Server 2008.
This project is planned to assist all who participate to learn the tools and practices needed to stay atop the .Net development world. We find that lots of members of the user group are still using VB 6, .Net 1.1, SQL 2000, non agile practices and other legacy things in there daily job.
My Questions:
Where can I host these VMs so everyone has access and keep the cost low or zero?
If hosting is not possible, does CodePlex offer TFS access? Does it offer agile? Work Items? Reports?
Does anyone have any better ideas?
Thanks for the help and ideas!
Have you looked into the available virtual labs Hosted by Microsoft?
That would eliminate your responsibility for hosting anything. You would also not have to be concerned about any licensing issues with the software that is installed on the Virtual Images.
There are a number of labs for Team System on the Microsoft site.
You can also go to the root Virtual Labs Site where there is a complete listing of available labs. Ths way the responsibilty for hosting is not yours, Microsoft has taken care of it.
Also don't forget to look at Microsoft Learning, there are frequently free offerings for newer technologies that give someone a basic overview, you won't be an expert but it will give you a basic understanding. There are also more indepth offerings but they are usually pay for access.
Good luck and hopefully this helps.
Now that sounds like an interesting project.
1) Perhaps one of the local hosting companies will sponsor a box to host the VMs, or ask one of the ISVs for a host in the DMZ. It is hard work to rein in a sponsor but it will also give you a lot of contacts in the industry.
2) I doubt Codeplex will be a solution for this project as it is very TFS-centric.
3) Have you asked the local Microsoft office? The office here in Copenhagen, Denmark have often helped a lot, even with issues that they knew nothing about but they have always found just the right guy.
Looks like the best way is to use CodePlex.
Related
What are the steps to implement DevOPs for a C# windows desktop based application.
What are the tools should be used to automate the manual process like testing, code review, code analysis, performance, build & release, deployment and change requests deployment
That is a very general question. It relies on specific needs, budget considerations, technologies, company size, and more.
You can try all sort of free offering out there, just to experiment. Since you're working on Windows with C#, so you're already have strong connection to Microsoft, I would say check out Visual Studio Team Services, it's a cloud-based ALM/DevOps tool, free for up to 5-users team.
We work for a small firm and we just started getting few SharePoint Projects.
Setup what we have done:
Purchased a new server and installed SharePoint 2010, SQL 2008R2, Visual Studio 2010 in the same server.
Created the application in the SharePoint Central Administration.
Developers directly login to server built the project using Visual Studio. (In server, only 2 ppl can login and work)
Issue:
1. We started getting 2 more projects, and the count of developers became more.
We need to know how to set up an environment where all the developers can work.
Also need to know if there is any way that they can work from local and then we can push the application to the server.
We do not have budget to get one more server and install TFS, so need to know if there is any other repository where we can make the above task possible.
Any help from all you people will me greatful.
Expecting a reply at the earliest.
Regards,
Alex
Depending on what specification laptops/PC's you have you may be able to create a virtual machine to do the development within. All the licenses here would be covered by MSDN subscription(if your devs have this) I think. VM's can get very big so what all the developers did in my last company was to have an external HD with our VM's on there, i think we were using e-sata connected external hd's
If you have TFS you should be able to connect the VM's up to this which essentially would allow you to use the build functionality to create your WSP packages ready for production(once testing has passed on your VM obviously), this package can then be dropped by TFS automatically to your production server ready for installation.
The great thing about this model is that you can have multiple VM's so if you break one you can just use a fresh one! All developers will be on a different VM but with some configuration would be working from the same source code.
Essentially this method has it's drawbacks and it's positives but i found this way was really benificial to me as i was learning how to do things and regularly needed a new VM :P
Something to note about what you have said, It is not recommended that you have VS on your production server.
Hope this helps
Truez
I'm working as part of a volunatry team creating an open source product with a permissive license. We are currently using Visual SVN Server/TortoiseSVN for source control and TeamCity for our continuous integration builds.
I would like to add a bug tracking component into the mix that will integrate into SVN. Ideally, I'd like to use FogBugz but we have no budget. So, I need an alternative. The requirements are:
Must be free or have a free version supporting at least 20 developers (we're volunteers!)
Must integrate with VisualSVN Server
Must run on Windows
I prefer Microsoft technology (ASP.Net over PHP; SQL Server over MySQL, etc) because we are a Microsoft shop, we have experience with those tools and already have them installed.
Must be able to work with a geographically distributed team
Must work with Express editions of Visual Studio (the developers don't all have the Pro version so we can't rely on Visual Studio add-ins).
I'd like The Community's recommendations, please, for products that meet all of the above requirements.
[Clarification: our license is very close (though not word-for-word) to the MIT license.]
Trac: It is not a Microsoft technology but will integrate well into SVN. There are not many free bug tracking software's that are free on Microsoft technology.
JIRA is free for open source projects and will run on Windows. Subversion integration is available and provided through a plugin.
Trac
Redmine
Try Bugzilla.
Is free
I do not know if integrates with SVN... but I suppose the answer is YES.
Runs on Windows - you must set up few
components, but it actually runs
prety well on IIS, however
installation is a bit tricky.
Bugzilla is Perl and MySQL. However,
as I said I had installed succesfully
Bugzilla on Windows 2003.
Installation of MySql and Perl does
not take a lot of server resources -
we had those two on our ASP.NET +
MSSQL test server, and no performacne
drop had been observed.
Works with distributed team.
Try InDefero, you can even get the hosted way for free if your project is not that big in size.
With the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2010, and all the lovely new features in C# 4.0, I would really love to update from 2008. However, over the last few years, I've managed to get student pricing, or even free versions via the MSDN Academic Alliance.
Now I am no longer a student.
I can't seem to justify the $AU500 pricetag of even the Standard version for what is at the moment, essentially a hobby. As much as I may like for it to be, it just isn't paying the bills.
So, I've read on the Microsoft site that there's no non-commercial clause in the Express version EULA which is good because I do the occasional bit of paid work in it. How much is missing from the Express version though, compared to Professional (what I use currently, and what the 2010 beta is)? Am I likely to go through withdrawal pains as I reach for something that just isn't there?
As far as addons go, the only one I've really played with is VisualSVN, and I can live with just using TortoiseSVN manually. Anything else I should be aware of?
Version comparisons can be found here: (For 2008) (Edit: A far more in depth document can be downloaded from here)
The things that leap out to me as features I wouldn't want to be without are:
Extensibility (no plugins like VisualSVN or Resharper)
Source Code Control
Remote debugging
64-bit compiler support (x64) (from the first link, though the document implies you can make 64bit apps...)
SQL Server 2005 integration
No setup projects (for making MSI installers)
Limited refactoring
Some missing debugging tools (especially the threads window)
If you can live without those (and the other limitations that wouldn't bother me personally) then I guess that you'll get by with Express just fine.
Final thought: Express isn't your only option for free .net development, there is also SharpDevelop which has some advantages (SVN integration, compact framework support) over Express. Though I'm sure it has many limitations too.
Do you do any entrepreneurial work? If you're building the next killer app, check out BizSpark: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
There is new program now available from Microsoft to allow web developers to access the Microsoft Stack similar to the BizSpark program.
It is called Website Spark. VS 2008 Professional Edition and SQL Server 2008 Web Editon are some of the tools available through the program.
Of all things I would probably miss the ability to install extensions. Especially tools like AnkhSVN and TestDriven.NET have grown invaluable to me...
I would seriously consider investing some money in purchasing VS especially if you can get some of that back by using it for jobs.
Maybe switching to Eclipse and Java is an option for you?
EDIT:
By the way, investing a few hundred dollars is common among ex-students. If you were a designer you would probably have to invest $1000 on Adobe software.
You won't be able to have solutions with multiple project types (so no mixed language solutions), or solution folders either.
The main thing that is missing is the ability to build an installer for a solution.
The work-around is to build the installer using some open source installer for .NET, e.g. WiX.
And multi-language solutions are more cumbersome (e.g. mixed C# and VB.NET).
I use the Professional version, but I didn't experience any problems with opening and building my project/solution in the Express Edition.
I'm a developer who works on both individual and group projects using Microsoft Visual Studio. I could setup one of several different source control packages, such as VSS, SourceGear Vault or SVN on a server of my own and access them remotely; however, I don't want to deal with the hassle of setting it up, configuring it, etc.
Does anyone offer a hosted source control service?
For Git, check out GitHub. Good packages, used by an awful lot of opensource projects. Considered to be one of the best hosting experiences for git.
I use Assembla to host all my personal projects. It has 500mb of storage and you can host your code and do bug tracking and issue tracking.
It also has a good set of tools and you can use SVN, Trac/SVN, Trac/git, Mercurial or even an external SVN server for source control.
http://unfuddle.com/ offers a wide variety of SCM offerings (Subversion/Git/Maybe CVS?) as well as issue tracking. And they do it very well.
We use Dreamhost for our subversion repositories and are very happy so far, plus you can't beat the price:
http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting-features.html#svn
Google Code, SourceForge all have code hosting solutions. How private do you want to be ?
A basic hosting plan at dreamhost gets you tons of web hosting space, bandwidth, database, jabber chat server, CVS, subversion repository and more for a little more than 5 bucks a month.
Beanstalk seems nice (SVN only), but i don't have any experience with it. Free plan has 20mb space for 3 users and 1 repository.
Project Locker hosts both subversion repositories and an issue tracking software, trac, for you. Trac is real nice when coupled with version control.
I used CVSDude a long time ago. They were free up to 10 MBs at that time.
I'm using webfaction (webfaction.com) as my main web-host at the moment. They offer subversion as a 'one-click-installer' - in reality it takes a few more clicks than the name suggests, but it's really a straightforward process.
Their technical support is absolutely brilliant, and you're provided with the same features across each of their levels of shared hosting. I'd recommend them, most hosts I've used have been pretty awful in comparison.
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