Raman Zhylich

You can get this message if you are using tfs proxy. The source control proxy 'xxxxxxxxx' is not responding, so the request will be sent to the main server. Please verify your settings. Additional information: TF30063: You are not authorized to access Microsoft-IIS/7.5. ---- Summary: 0 conflicts, 1 warnings, 0 errors ---- Solution: Go to Control Panel\Credential Manager and add your tfs credentials for proxy server.

I've been struggling for a long time with npm because it keeps all downloaded packages and its dependencies in a deep tree-like structure and therefore exceeds allowed 260 characters restriction for paths. As a result most of the tooling doesn't work properly. MSBUILD wildcard search is failing without visible symptoms when long paths exist. CruiseControl cannot cleanup workspace because of long paths. TFS is failing to compare files for the same reason. I really can't understand how such an issue could exist in a world-known package manager. Fortunately, I've got to know that npm@3 is coming where this problem is fixed. In this release npm flattens folder-structure eliminating long paths. I've tested this and it really works. I'm happy this problem will be solved at last soon.

One of the features of Windows MSI is that it can determine what version of the product is installed already and upgrade it if necessary. It uses unique product code guid to identify your product among all installed programs. This implies that product can be installed only once. But what if you have a requirement to install the same product several times on the same machine? Microsoft suggests that you use instance transforms to do that. But this means that for each installation you need to ship a separate instance transform which is not suitable in my case. I came up with the following script that modifies msi product code and allows you to install it as many times as you want. Each installation is identified by a unique instance name. You specify it as an Instance parameter to the powershell script below. wirunsql.vbs and wisuminf.vbs are part of Windows SDK:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3138

Recently I faced a weird issue with hanging Visual Studio. It hung forever in 5 seconds just after starting devenv.exe. I tried to repair, uninstall and install it but it didn't help. I attached then to hanging process with WinDbg. I found that GUI thread was stuck in licensing operation. I removed HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses\E79B3F9C-6543-4897-BBA5-5BFB0A02BB5C key from registry and reinstalled Visual Studio again. Everything worked fine then.