Thinkable

Visual Studio: When “Copy Local” doesn’t copy

Jeff — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 04:52:16 +0000

My build machine was leaving out a referenced DLL after the standard full refresh from source control. Eventually I find that the “Copy Local” property for said DLL was false, while on my machine it was true. Odd. Google gives me what seems to be the answer: cycle the “Copy Local” property from true to false and back again. Sure enough that modifies the project file so that reference is marked as “Private”:

True

This carries through source control and ends up on the build machine, and now “Copy Local” is true there as well as my laptop. Yay! Not.. Still the DLL is not copied to the bin.

Back to the drawing board. For whatever reason that DLL was in the build machine’s GAC. A referenced assembly isn’t copied to the the bin if the DLL is in the GAC, even though the path to the DLL is specified and “Copy Local” is true. From MSDN:

“If you deploy an application that contains a reference to a custom component that is registered in the GAC, the component will not be deployed with the application, regardless of the CopyLocal setting.”

It’s unfortunate that the build environment can affect what references are deployed, especially when the references are explicit.

To work around this, I used gacutil from an administrator VS prompt to remove the reference from the build machine’s GAC and the build finally included the needed references.

Debugging Powershell on Windows Server 2008

Jeff — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:08:16 +0000

Recently I’ve run into a Powershell script problem on a Windows Server 2008 R2 box. Typically I’d use ISE to debug, however, this box didn’t have it for some reason. The instructions on Shay Levy’s blog also apply to 2008 R2 systems.

In short that’s:

Import-Module ServerManager
Add-WindowsFeature Powershell-ISE

Trac Assign-to as Drop-Down List

Jeff — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:43:44 +0000

I’ve got several Trac systems in use for various reasons. However assigning tickets to a user is wide open by default. That list can be restricted to users that have logged in and supplied their email address by changing [ticket] restrict_owner in trac.in to true.

Users that are in that Trac’s database and have the TICKET_MODIFY privilege will show up in the list.

See the Trac Tickets wiki for more.

Another background tile generator

Jeff — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:59:06 +0000

I’ve switched to a pattern generated by PatternCooler. I’m simply amazed by the options and how well the app functions.

TED Talks

Jeff — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:59:55 +0000

I try to watch a TED talk every day. Just before I switched the web site over to WordPress, I had watched this talk on Try something new for 30 days which I think led to my comment that I’d try this WordPress for 30 days. I regularly grab a video in the motivational category, however, I’ve rarely been disappointed by any of them. It’s become something I look forward to every day. Try it for a month, you won’t regret it!

Broken Link Handling

Jeff — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:27:51 +0000

Another benefit of moving from my ancient version of MediaWiki to WordPress is easier access to plug-ins. Many of my links hadn’t been checked in years. Simply adding the Broken Link Checker quickly identified links that were either shut down some time ago or were broken during the transfer from MediaWiki to WordPress.

At this point it’s quite clear to me that I’ll be sticking with WordPress for a while.

Using CSS to Place Text Over an Image

Jeff — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:24:49 +0000

The default header for the WordPress twenty-eleven theme is fairly large, taking up a lot of space on the initial impression that I’d prefer to use for other content. I’d rather have the title over top of the image. Turns out that this is easily addressed by modifying the Style.css of the child theme to position the title element in absolute terms. Subsequent sibling elements (the header image) are positioned relatively from there.

#branding hgroup {
    position: absolute;
}

Image Resources

Jeff — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:30:58 +0000

I found some free high quality image sources:

InterfaceLIFT Wallpapers – Awesome backgrounds (ok for personal use).
BGPatterns – Tile pattern generator

Child Themes

Jeff — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:42:03 +0000

Modifying the theme of a word-press page was simple:

Create a directory for the “child” theme next to the parent theme on the web server.
Create a style.css file to point to the parent theme.
Modify the css or add other templates and functions as needed.

From Child Themes

Update

Jeff — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:58:37 +0000

I’ve (lightly) maintained a Mediawiki site for over a decade now and it’s time to move on. Although I’ve set up a couple Drupal sites previously, my needs aren’t as great as all that (that being lots of users adding content and forums and so on). I’m running this for 30 days as a test case.