Can I develop online at Azure without installing anything locally? - azure

I think I misunderstood the whole Azure development concept. I thought I could run the Visual Studio IDE within Internet Explorer or something along those lines.

You can, but you'll use an RDP client (like mstsc.exe) instead of internet explorer. You can create a Virtual Machine in Azure that has visual studio installed on it and develop on that VM. There are a number of images already in the platform that support this scenario if you're an MSDN subscriber, I believe.
Even if you're not an MSDN subscriber, you can create a VM and set it up for development yourself. Then you can use your remote desktop client to log into that machine from anywhere and develop on it instead of your local box. This isn't limited to a Window dev env't either, of course.
I use this in scenarios where I have a constrained laptop but good connectivity and a desire to get some work done. You could use this to develop with a full IDE from a Surface RT, e.g. :)

I think I misunderstanded the whole Azure development concept, I
thought I could run Visual Studio IDE within Internet Explorer or
something
Azure is a web hosting environment in a nutshell. I think you are talking about Visual Studio Online in which you can run VS IDE inside browser.
Once you finish writing code in Visual Studio Online, you can deploy it to Azure.
Visual-Studio-Online-Monaco
channel9 - Visual Studio Online Monaco

Related

Setting up a sharepoint site for remote connection

I have been tasked with setting up a SharePoint 2013 site being a straight MVC developer has me scrambling to figure out how to implement a solution that works for everyone involved.
We have a server with SharePoint on it and visual stuido however RDC only has 2 connections (company will not pay for more connections, tried that route) and we have the potential for 8 developers to be logged in at once.
our local machine setup is windows 8.1 with visual studio 2013 on it.
I read somewhere you can do remote connections to SharePoint but have no clue how to set that up or if it's even possible for use.
if anyone can help point me in a direction that would be great.
If you are strictly developing Apps you can develop remotely and this TechNet covers the step-by-step for it (configure the server and infrastructure for Apps, create a developer site and give your Devs the required permissions).
If you want to develop components that use the server side Object model (Microsoft.SharePoint.dll) you MUST do so from a SharePoint server.
You can try to copy the DLL over to your dev machine, and you can successfully build. With this, though, you will lose many of Visual Studio's integrations and will not be able to deploy or debug from Visual Studio

Is a good practice to install Visual Studio in the same server as TFS?

We are having compilations problems in a TFS server and it's because the server lacks several libraries built in the default VS2012 Premium installation (Microsoft Fakes in this case).
I'm unsure of going ahead installing a full instance of VS, but first I want to know what is the best practice in this regard?
What is recommended?
Since we are talking a sandbox, do whatever and don't worry about it. If we are talking best practices, it's not a good idea to put your build tier on the app tier / data tier. Any developer could check in code that gets run on the server during the compile and trash your entire environment.
Have you looked at Visual Studio Online? It's a hosted TFS service and you can use their hosted build controller or configure your own. That makes for a very good sandbox IMO.
I don't see any issue installing VS on the TFS server(I assume you run your builds on that server too and that's when you are seeing the problem. Ideally tfs server and build box should be separate but some people use the same box.)
I have used Visual Studio on the build box several times to debug issues with builds. You just need to make sure you close the VS instance (if it has a solution open) once you are done with debugging otherwise your builds can fail when they try to clean up the project directory at the start of the build.
We run a single server TFS instance which has everything - sql, SharePoint and tfs - running on it. It is also a build server so it has to have VS 2010 and 2012 installed. We've done this with all versions since 2005 and have had no issues with it at all.

Debugging Azure: Error attaching the debugger to the IIS worker process

I have a web application asp.net to deploy to Windows Azure. I try to run it on local first. But when debugging, I catch this error from VS2010:
"There was an error attaching the debugger to the IIS worker process
for URL 'http://127.255.0.0:82/' for role instance
'deployment16(6).WindowsAzureProject2.WebApplication3_IN_0'.
Unable to start debugging on the web server ......."
I've search so hard to find the solution for this problem but there's nothing seems work for me. I'm a newbie in Windows Azure, it's really a big trouble with me.
I had similar problem with Windows 8, debuging a cloud application with Visual Studio 2012 RTM and Azure SDK 1.71, when trying to launch the application into the compute emulator. It was a very simple app, but I used Azure diagnostics. At the end these are two things I have changed that have work for me, both turning on Windows 8 features (so go to Win8 and open 'Turn Windows Features On/Off'.
Activate the checkboxes for:
Internet Information Services Hostable Web Core
Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Application Development Features > ASP.NET 4.5
Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Health and Diagnostics > Tracing
Internet Information Services > Web Management Tools > IIS Management Scripts and Tools
That worked for me, it makes sense, as I'm using Visual Studio 2012 and trying to get some trace information using diagnostics in Azure.
I hope this will work for you or give some tip about the problem. In the case of being useful information, remember to vote as response or as value tip.
Thanks,
Mike
This usually happens when there's a problem with the project to be deployed to the emulator (WindowsAzureProject2 in your case).
Try the following:
Check %UserProfile%\AppData\Local\dftmp\IISConfiguratorLogs\IISConfigurator.log file for the error messages. See more details in this answer.
Make sure your project can be started without the emulator. It's a web project, so just try to start it as a regular web project. Or publish it to the separate folder and try to create a website in IIS of it.
Check your *.csdef and *.cscfg files to make sure all the configuration is correct.
Make sure that the build output of your project is not empty. You can do this by going to IIS, find the site with the name similar to deployment16(6).WindowsAzureProject2.WebApplication3_IN_0, right click --> Explore.... Make sure that this folder is not empty and contains all the files required to start a web project successfully.
BTW, there's a similar question: Debugger can't connect when starting local azure project
Follow step 11 from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35448. Worked for me on Windows 8 with Oct 2012 SDk
I just have today the same problem trying to Debug locally with Azure Storage Emulator in Windows 7. So in the Azure project properties, in Web tab, I checked the radio button 'Use IIS Express' and it debugged without problem. I hope this helps someone.
I encountered this exact same problem when I upgraded an existing Azure solution to the Azure SDK 2.1. After some hunting around I uncovered that the upgrade had automatically set the "Local Development Server" setting to "Use IIS Web Server".
Changing the "Local Development Server" setting to "Use IIS Express" fixed the problem immediately.
To access this setting right-click the Azure cloud project file in your solution, select the "Properties" option, tab down to "Web" and you'll see the following setup.
Also, make sure you run Visual Studio as administrator
Please check the version of emulator you have installed. If your code is created in older sdk and you have a new emulator installed it will give you this error.
Check the version of Azure APIs in your project, go to Project > references and right click on Azure dlls to check the version, same sdk version must be installed on the system, higher are optional as azure 2.x are not backward compatible.

Using Windows Azure in a local Dev Mode with PHP

We are trying to evaluate and eventually migrate to the windows azure cloud platform.
I am stumbling on the installation process...
I'm currently following this tutorial.
I can't get the Windows development Fabric interface working like on this picture.
When I install the app fabric sdk (downloaded here) I get no .exe program to simulate the cloud...
I installed Windows AppFabric which is not what I need (I think).
I keep on being directed on AppPlatformInstaller which do not install what I need but I'm sure is part of my solution.
You are downloading wrong SDK. For Windows Azure Cloud platform you must download and install Windows Azure SDK And Tools for Visual Studio.
Then you will have a folder %Program Files%\Windows Azure SDK\v1.5\bin. There will be devfabric and devstore folders, under which the local development Frabric and Development Storage executables will reside.
Then if you are targeting .NET based solutions, you will have new project templates in Visual Studio, and everything shall be running smoothly. On the other hand, if you are targeting open source solutions you might want to follow the like provided by Ben.
As for Windows AppFabric - yes, it is wrong in terms that it is not related to Windows Azure at all.
Let us know if you have any issues when downloading and installing latest Windows Azure SDK And Tools for Visual Studio
You may want to check out the docs available from the Microsoft Interoperability Team. They maintain an entire site dedicated to running PHP on Windows Azure
http://azurephp.interoperabilitybridges.com/articles/build-and-deploy-a-windows-azure-php-application
Basically to get it working just install the Windows Azure SDK and with Windows Azure SDK for PHP. Build your PHP application and then run the package command. Your PHP application will be rolled into a Windows Azure project and launched in the local dev fabric

Starting Development for Google Chrome....Getting Started Issues!

Our organization has decided that my project will be developed for internal use with the Google Chrome browser. So yesterday I started looking around the internet for just how I would go about doing that.
I found the WebKit.org development tool and have been trying to install it using the instructions found here:
http://webkit.org/building/tools.html
I am installing on a Windows machine that does not have Visual Studio 2005, so following the directions I downloaded Visual C++ Express 2005. Now I am at:
Install the Windows Server 2003 R2 Platform SDK, then follow steps 2 and 3 of “How to: Use Visual C++ Express Edition with the Microsoft Platform SDK.”
Except I can't follow steps 2 and 3 because when I go to try and run the program all I have in the menu is:
Start -> Programs -> Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt
which opens a command prompt.
Can anyone tell me what I've done incorrectly?
Additionally, do you HAVE to develop in WebKit? Or is that just the best way to work with the Chrome engine?
Thanks!
Leslie
You shouldn't need to 'build chrome'
If you need anything special, the Chrome Extension framework is pretty awesome: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/overview.html
But I imagine if you are moving from IE to Chrome, as a client for a webapp, things should just work.
Leslie,
I found this Google I/O talk to be useful as an intro.
step 2 and 3 are on Microsoft's web site referred in the building instructions. The steps describes steps you need to do after opening Visual C++. If you have only the command prompt in the Visual Studio start menu folder, reinstall your Visual C++ Express edition.
I don't think writing your own webkit-based browser satisfies your decision to use the Google Chrome browser. By the way. From your limited description of your requirement I don't see why it cannot be a B/S application. If you have too many C++ code to port to web, you can try host Google Chorme Frame as an ActiveX. I am not sure if this is the best approach for you, since it does not have any API documentation for developers.
Writing a browser based app could mean:
You run code (perhaps in .Net, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, etc...) on a server with potentially Javascript, flash, etc... running in the browser. The browser communicates with the server through HTTP requests. If that is the case you certainly don't need to worry about installing webkit.
It could mean writing a Chrome extension which would again likely mean running .Net, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, or some other language of your choice on the server and Javascript in the Chrome extension. Again in this case there is no need to install webkit.
It's possible it could mean writing an app based on webkit, but that would be replacing your old desktop app with another desktop app which doesn't seem likely. With this solution, you are no longer running Chrome, but your own custom made browser. Not to mention this seems like overkill for a jury management system.
I would guess you want to do option 1. That is typically what people mean by a browser based app. It would be a much better use of your time to read a book on web development than to fool around with webkit.
You should find the executable file to launch Visual Studio Express in this folder: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8.0\Common7\IDE\"

Resources