About code. Mostly on C++
I recently encountered a problem creating new logins with SQL Server. Something that has worked for years suddenly stopped with the following error: Password validation failed. The password does not meet Windows policy requirements because it is too short. Since SQL Server was using Windows local security policy I went and checked that at Security … Read more
Visual Studio 2015 comes with many new features and improvements in the IDE, the debugger or language compilers. Obviously, there are more than three things I like in the new IDE, but three things have caught my attention from the very beginning. The Error Window One of the things that bothered me the most about … Read more
I have tried to assemble together information about the Visual C++ releases, the compiler and the frameworks (MFC and ATL). You can find these on many places, but it is often incomplete or focused on something particular (Visual Studio, C++ compiler, framework, etc.). The table below is the result of this effort. It is incomplete … Read more
If you work on a Apache Cordova project in Visual Studio 2013 using Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova CTP 3 or 3.1 you should know there are important breaking changes in migrating the project from Visual Studio 2013 to Visual Studio 2015. The project can be migrated, but you have to do everything manually, … Read more
guidgen.exe is a small utility that comes with Visual Studio and generates GUIDs in a variety of formats. The problem with the tool is that it does not format GUIDs in plain text, which I happen to need many times (in source code, database tables, etc.) and I suppose is a feature needed by many … Read more
Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (VSCordovaTools for short) is a great Visual Studio toolset to develop hybrid applications for multiple platforms, including Android, iOS and Windows. One of the nice things about the tool is that it installs everything you need to develop with Cordova. You don’t have to care about installing multiple components, … Read more
Several CTPs for Visual Studio 2014 have been released so far. The 3rd and 4th CTPs can be actually used with a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. If you have a Windows Azure account you can go ahead and create a VM. If you are an MSDN Subscriber or you have a trial account, you have … Read more
Visual Studio 2012 introduced a new framework for writing debugger visualizers for C++ types that replaced the old autoexp.dat file. The new framework offers xml syntax, better diagnostics, versioning and multiple file support. Visualizers are defined in XML files with extension .natvis. These visualizers are loaded each time the debugger starts. That means if you … Read more
Visual Studio 2012 provides support for new features, such as code review and feedback through the use of the Work Item tracking system in TFS. (You can read more about it in this article New Code Review feature in Visual Studio 2012). However, to be able to use these features you must use a process … Read more
The larger a VC++ project is (or any project for that matter) the more time it takes to build. If you have solutions with many large projects the build times could get into your way. Starting a rebuild and going to lunch was a common scenario for me, as building took 20-25 minutes. Of course, … Read more