A while back I tossed around the notion of having a beta of Chef available for testing by Thanksgiving. So far I’m doing quite well with this goal. Now that the setup situation has been resolved, I can work on a few other issues that have to be done before I add the few final features that will be in the 1.0 product. It may not be too far-fetched to see the first beta available in the coming weeks, so if you’d like to give it a try I would be very appreciative. Just shoot me an email or comment here.
Tag Archives: .Net
Chef, Sql Express, and Installers
Over the past week or so I have been reviewing the landscape of Installers that I can use to get Chef installed on people’s machines. The landscape has changed quite a bit since the last time I looked, with a lot more small install authoring tools available. Before, it was just InstallShield or Wise Installer – now there’s NSIS, InnoSetup (I know, not new..), AdvancedInstaller, and several other viable tools.
And after carefully reviewing many of them, I’ve run into road blocks with my setup needs that can’t be fulfilled without spending upwords of $500. So I now have a setup using Visual Studio 2005′s deployment projects. It’s not quite what I wanted when I first started down the road but it’s not too bad either. In fact, I may actually end up liking this method a bit more. Read on for details.
Visual Studio Addin
At work yesterday I created my first Visual Studio Addin. Now that I know how to do it, I’m going to create one for something I’ve always wanted: launch windows explorer on a folder in the solution explorer. There apparently used to be a powertoy for this feature, but that was for VS2003.
Icon update
As I watched the Cardinals beat the Tigers tonight I sat and redid most of the toolbar icons for Chef. Every now and then it’s nice to take a break from coding, and for those times there is plenty of graphics and documentation work to be done. Here’s what the current toolbar looks like.
What do you think?
C and .NET
A coworker and I have been trudging through a lot of code recently. .NET code written by a C programmer. Folks, these things should never mix, because when they do, you end up with:
byteArray = new Byte[hexString.Length >> 1];
That’s right. Don’t divide by 2. Bit shift. And nevermind that there is a builtin .Net function that does what this line of code came from. And nevermind yet again that there’s a good helping of HEX shit like this in an ASP.NET web app.
nifty visual studio 2005 feature
A coworker just ran across this awesome feature in a book so I thought I’d share it.
How many times have you recompiled an app just to get some debug/trace information spit out? In VS 2005 you can have a breakpoint write information to the output window as if you compiled in Debug.WriteLine statements. Just set a Breakpoint, right click on it and select When Hit. In the dialog you can configure what gets printed out.
Day of code
Today I probably spent a good 6-8 hours working on Chef. I was able to get a lot done and move it to the point where the recipe management side has a functional, basic object model. You know what that means?? Time to move on to the UI!
I already started to play around with the basic look and feel of the UI, and I’m excited about it. Its unlike anything I’ve done before; I look forward to being able to give a sneak-preview in the coming weeks.
Today also saw me beginning to hunt for a good, cheap Help Authoring tool. I ran across a promising, free product shipped with the Visual Studio SDK called HelpStudio Lite but upon installation discovered the license prohibits it being used for anything other than Visual Studio-integrated help solutions. That was mentioned nowhere, but was bright and shiny in the EULA. WTF! The next candidate is WinCHM. It appears to be basic and with a good price tag ($50), so I’ll try and dig up some reviews on it.
ejichef.com
The past two nights I have been working up a prototype for the new Chef website. I think it’s the best looking site I’ve done, if I say so myself. Taking the advice of a coworker, I mocked up the layout in photoshop before touching html/css. It sure made the process go much faster, and if I hadn’t done it this way I know I wouldn’t have ended up with these results. Worked great.
Now that the general layout is done, I’ll slowly move it over to ASP.NET and really work on it. But that’ll be a while because I have to finish the Chef rewrite first.