If you want to do this (Register Output, C++)

and don't want to get this error message

then start Visual Studio with Run as Administrator. I have SP1 and no Vista supplements installed, so maybe there will be (or already is) an elevation prompt for registering output.

From the "What could possibly go wrong?" department: starting a WPF application (verified offenders are MsbuildG and VistaBridge from the Windows Vista SDK) crashes Vista. Or the graphics driver to be more precise. The result is nonetheless a perfectly reproducible BSOD on my IBM X31 laptop. The funny part? This ATI Mobility driver (6.14.10.6546) came from the Windows Vista Update Service and is MS HW Compat signed!

Got a developer question on how Windows Vista security affects your application? Then the MSDN Forum Security for Applications in Windows Vista is the right place to go.

I don't recommend turning off UAC (User Account Control) on Windows Vista, but there might be valid reasons to shut it off once in a while for testing purposes (like in a VM). That is where TweakUAC comes in handy:

The Shift key can be very useful on Windows Vista. For example, type in the name of the application in the Search box and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter:

This will start the application as Administrator. Next is Windows Explorer, where Shift + right-clicking on a file will yield a different context menu:

The new feature is "Copy as Path" - allowing you to copy the full file path to the clipboard. I need that quite often, so this is a welcome addition indeed.

Speaking of Shift +  right-clicking: when you do that without a file selected on the right-hand pane in Explorer, you get another option, namely "Open Command Windows Here":

That is most useful!

This is so totally pathetic: rolling back a changeset in Team Foundation Version Control. A decent version control simply must have a revert story - mistakes do happen, and when you need to revert a check-in that for the sake of an example has 20+ files associated, the advice in the aforementioned how-to definitely will drive your blood pressure up.

Instead of developing a medical condition, you can go for tfpt - the Team Foundation PowerToys. The command tfpt rollback is your friend.

Shortly after Christmas last year, I started with the Code Comment Checking Policy (read about it here, here and here) for Team Foundation Server. The idea for it was based on Florent Santin's TFSCCPolicy, but it used an entirely different approach (full-blown parser instead of RegEx).

As I never intended to compete with him (after all, we are both MVPs), I contacted him informing him of my endeavours. He liked the approach I took, and offered me take over on CodePlex because he had little time to spend on it anyways. So, at long last, today I set up shop as project coordinator at TFS Code Comment Checking Policy, Formerly Known as TFSCCPolicy.

The latest binaries are available, as well as the source code checked into the repository. If you have ideas on how to improve the feature set, let us know in the User Forum. Same goes for joining the team or letting us know about blog posts or tutorials you wrote.

From the "outsmarting yourself department": Yesterday, I installed Team Explorer on my machine to get access to a CodePlex project. Easy enough, at least that's what I thought. So after installation I went to Visual Studio to configure the server connection, but I ended up not being able to connect:

As I was in a hurry anyways, I decided to leave it at that. Fast forward a few hours, to a different location: a pub. I was discussing IT problems with a friend, and at some point we got to firewalls. That's when I went "Bingo!" - this Vista machine has Privoxy installed, to "emulate" Firefox's Adblock extension (Privoxy does a few things more - check their Web site, it's free). And IE7 is configured to use it as proxy server.

So first thing today was to get back into Visual Studio, try again, and then check the Privoxy logs:

Note to self: The TFS client APIs use Internet Explorer settings when it comes to connecting to the Internet, and Privoxy positively strips requests of certain headers.

Fixing is easy: Tools / Options / Environment / Web Browser:

And then add exceptions for all the TFS servers you need to access:

Security does tend to get in the way. Nothing new here.

I just gave StatSVN a try, which compiles statistics for Subversion repositories. For my trial, I used the 2.1 branch of SharpDevelop - which, because only created a month ago - should create a small and manageable statistic to start out with.

What do you need to get up and running with StatSVN (except, of course, StatSVN itself)? Well, the Subversion command line client (get it here), as well as Java. Working with StatSVN is really easy - simply follow the steps outlined in the readme and you can't go wrong - it even works nicely on Windows Vista.

If you don't want to install StatSVN on your box just to see how a report might look like for a real-world project, I have packaged the report generated for our SharpDevelop 2.1 branch:

DemoReport.zip (1.27 MB)

Before looking at the report, check out the LOC and churn rate I have posted below:

This branch was created from /trunk to only contain bug fixes from Beta 2 to release candidates and RTW. That's why there are spikes of activity, with no activity at other days. Also, not all developers are working on the branch, many are concentrating on developing features for the new version which lives in /trunk.

...doesn't necessarily yield what you are looking for as the first result:

Especially #1 I would rate as misleading and advertising that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.