Check if a Build Definition Exists for a Given Repo in VSTS/TFS

In scenarios where you have many teams working in the same team project, you might have multiple TFS Git repos within a single team project. When you want to create a build definition for a given repo, you might be wondering what if there is a build definition already exists for the repo. Opening each build definition to find that out is a waste of time. Let’s look at a small utility script that can give you the information quickly using VSTS/TFS REST API.

Values of repositoryType Parameter in VSTS REST API

VSTS REST API is really useful in achieving automations in many aspects of the software development process, and it can be used to write some handy utilities to obtain information quickly with appealing formats. However, sometimes you have to bit struggle to find out which are the correct values to pass for some parameters expected by VSTS REST API, where the documentation does not provide much of a valid information. One such parameter is ‘repositoryType’ in documentation found here for listing build definitions, which does not give any information what are the expected values for the parameter.Documentation here gives some hint on what could be the values but does not have information for REST API expected values.

Setting VSTS Release Variable Values At the Time of Creating a Release

VSTS builds have the option to set build variable values at the time of queuing a build. You have to select option for build variable “Settable at queue time” to enable the variable to be set its value at the time of queuing  build. However, this feature was not available for VSTS Release and there was a user voice raised here requesting to allow setting release variables at the time of creating a release. As promised by MSFT, this feature is now available for VSTS Release. Let’s look at how to use it with VSTS web UI and with the VSTS REST API.

Developing Azure Functions in Visual Studio and Creating a Deployment Pipeline Using VSTS

Serverless computing has become a hot topic these days. It is providing you with paying only for the actual time your code is running and resources you are consuming without any worries about infrastructure. Azure functions let you build functions that can scale dynamically based on the needs, with a languages of your choice. When you install Visual Studio Azure Development workload you get templates for developing Azure Functions. Let’s look at how to create a simple Azure Function “Hello World” in Visual Studio and most importantly how to get your CI/CD pipeline ready within couple of minutes.

Solving OutOfMemoryException and Getting NUnit Tests on Visual Studio Test Explorer

It is fun to work with latest tools and frameworks but sometimes errors are bit confusing and searching for fix is not that easy. One team worked with NUnit and .NET 471 and complaint that the when compiling they get outofmemory exception “ NUnit Adapter 3.7.0.0: Test discovery starting Exception System.OutOfMemoryException, Exception converting mytest” . Searching pointed to few links in GitHub issues as shown below but those workarounds seem to be not applicable as .NET framework change back to 462 is not an option.Fix was really simple but looking for a solution sometimes takes time. So let’s explore the problem and the simple fix.