Cook Computing

DevelopMentor have set up a Longhorn list, which should be well worth subscribing to if it is anything like their .NET lists.

Lots of information to absorb from a distance. I was interested to read this on the Longhorn SDK site:

A compound file is a form of structured storage originally created for Component Object Model (COM). "Avalon" uses this format to store documents, applications, and application data. When stored in the compound file format, documents, applications, and data benefit from a reduction of performance penalties and overhead associated with storage in a flat file.

Is Cairo in sight at long last?

I've not had much time for reading blogs recently. So I'm probably missing a lot. However I did catch the first edition of John Lam's newsletter Practical Eye for the .NET Guy. It contains an article which compares software to hardware assembly lines and a short guide to NAnt. Worth having a look at, and its carefully laid out landscape format in PDF is very pleasant on the eyes.

Speaking of working from home, the biggest problem I have is that ClearCase is almost unusable over a slow network connection, e.g. VPN via ADSL. Checking in/out files is just about bearable but anything more complex, for example looking at the version tree of an element, or updating snapshot views containing large numbers of files, takes far too long. Even for simple operations there seems to be a huge amount of network activity. The ClearCase protocol certainly could have done with some premature optimization when it was designed.

If you are choosing a source code control system and you want your developers to be able to work remotely over a broadband connection, don't choose ClearCase.

Ingo describes how you can use how you can use the console tool "qwinsta" (Query Windows Station) to remotely disconnect a Terminal Services session:

That's the point in time when the console tools "qwinsta" (Query Window Station) and "rwinsta" (Reset Window Station) which are included even with Windows XP come into play. After authorizing at your server (f.e. by connecting to a share, etc.), you can run "qwinsta /SERVER:<server>" to enumerate all window stations and "rwinsta <id> /SERVER:<server>" to remotely disconnect a terminal services session.

This will be very useful for me: when working from home I often do work on my office development machine via Terminal Services and I regularly hit the problem that Ingo describes.

I've been too busy at work recently to post anything here. However I have received a couple of XML-RPC.NET bug reports and they have prompted me to start on the 1.0 release. I'm setting up a build environment on my Shuttle pc which will use NAnt to build versions of the library for .NET, 1.0 and 1.1, and Mono (currently at 0.28).

The Mono compiler almost compiles the library now. Just one error which I have yet to investigate. Once I get it working with Mono on Windows I'll then move on to Linux.