Resolve - TFS Build Hang When Building Wix Projects

Wix tools can be used to generate msi installable packages, .exe setup bundles, .msm merge modules, and .msp patches. Getting a wix project built with visual studio is fairly simple. If you are using VS you can install the extension from marketplace and install wix tools to get going in the development environment. Tools available for VS 217, 2015, 2013, 2012 and 2010.

You can setup TFS builds to build wix projects following the instructions in http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/msbuild/wix_with_team_build.html. There is more detailed documentation available in http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/msbuild/. The blog here also useful http://programcsharp.com/blog/post/building-wix-with-msbuild.

However, when you are running a build to package .msi etc using wix project you might notice the build sometimes hangs forever. This happens because of a deadlock when msbuild and wix waiting on the output stream.

Sonar Server on Azure VM

SonraQube has become grate tool providing detail analysis of code quality. Tracing of history of code quality checks let the development teams identify how the code quality improved (could be how the code is gotten so bad even). How to setup a SonarQube server to use with team foundation server is described in the post “Setting Up Sonar Server for TFS”. Let’s look at steps required to set this up in an Azure virtual machine and expose it to use with team services account.

1. Setup an Azure virtual machine with Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter.
2. Follow the instructions in the post  “Setting Up Sonar Server for TFS” and get the SonarQube server running inside the virtual machine.
3. To allow accessing the Sonar server default port 9000 through firewall of the virtual machine add an inbound firewall rule in the virtual machine allowing port 9000 for public and private access.
4. Above step alone will not allow public access to Azure VM hosted sonar server. You need to allow accessibility in Azure nsg(network security group) for the port. To do this go to the virtual machine in Azure portal, select Network Interfaces and click on the network interface.