I've always been a fan of code signing. There's "signing" to give the assembly a strong assembly name, and there's "signing" to verify the application hasn't been tampered with. (It irks me that they're named the same.) It finally gelled in my head the difference between the two. For my own reference, and for the benefit of others, here is a description of each: Strong Name Reason: This is necessary to install assemblies into the GAC and to include a library in a signed project. It is specific to managed code. Benefits: This insures the library doesn't conflict with...

NAnt is a phenomenally cool tool for automating build scripts. Coding NAnt build files feels natural to me: unix shell script style functions and xml style syntax. However, getting all the parameters just so is a bit intense. Visual Studio can provide intellisense for NAnt, if it has an xsd file to use for reference. NAnt comes with an nant.xsd, and some pretty good docs for installing it. This is great for NAnt tasks, but doesn't handle NAntContrib's features. Clint describes a technique here and here for using NAnt to build the nant.xsd file. He was...

Ok, I don't know who the wise guy is who keeps trying to give me feedback spam about [use your imagination here], but I'm really not thrilled to delete as much feedback spam as I get.  A new version of Subtext should cure it.  If not, I'll have to get drastic.  You have been warned...

NAnt is my new best friend. NAnt is very easy to learn, very straight forward to use, and very powerful in it's execution. NAnt is an automated build tool. Why would you deviate from Visual Studio's Build menu? Here's why. .config files. I've got a dev config file, I've got a production config file, various customers like their own pre-packaged config files, and I like to be able to debug live data issues with their config files as well. Well, I want that config file baked into the .msi installer I deliver to them. ...

High on my list of stuff I need to do is NUnit. Last I tried NUnit, it was wonderful and infuriating. I could run tests or debug code, but not both. My, how times have changed. I must conclude NUnit rocks! NUnit is for making automated tests of .NET code. Each test is a piece of C# code with a special [Test] attribute. There are 1000 quick start tutorials out there, so I won't bore you. Do a Google search, and you're good. And the NUnit quick start docs are also quite good. Here's...

Apologies up front to those who will flame me for this, but I must concede. I've been trying to find a good excuse to get into Linux for a while. I like the idea of open-source software running my organization. I like the idea of creating a test environment or another machine simply by downloading and installing. I can only imagine the headaches and dollars saved by moving to Linux. However, I have yet to find a reason to do so. My latest example is a good one. I want the ability to ssh. ...