The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.

So I thought of work around this issue. To reproduce the issue, I tampered the exe.config file of one of my application, by removing <configuration> tag from the file. And it started throwing the exception.

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.

I verified the same with EventViewer, and I found a message like this, under Windows Logs > Application

Activation context generation failed for “C:\CaptureItPlus\Binaries\CaptureItPlus.exe”. Error in manifest or policy file “C:\CaptureItPlus\Binaries\CaptureItPlus.exe.Config” on line 1. Invalid Xml syntax.

The error message is pretty self explanatory. If you are not able to access the event viewer, the other option is using sxstrace.exe tool. You can enable run the sxstrace in trace mode, you can do this by following command.

sxstrace.exe Trace -logfile:C:\captureittrace.log

And execute the application. After getting exception, stop the tracing and you can parse the log file using following command.

sxstrace.exe Parse -logfile:C:\captureittrace.log -outfile:C:\captureittrace.txt

It is required because .log is a binary file. Now open the .txt file, you can see similar message,

INFO: Parsing Application Config File C:\CaptureItPlus\Binaries\CaptureItPlus.exe.Config.
ERROR: Line 1: XML Syntax error.
ERROR: Activation Context generation failed.
End Activation Context Generation.

Now open the .exe.config and add the missing , now double click on the application, this issue will be resolved.

You can enable parallel test execution by editing the testsettings file, instead of double click and open the test settings dialog, open the file using Open with option in the context menu, and select XML(Text) Editor option, which open the testsettings file in XML Editor. In the XML, find the Execution element. Add parallelTestCount attribute to the Execution element(By default it will not be there).

Parallel Test count attribute in testsettings file

By default it will be 1(if the attribute is not exists), other options are 0 for Auto configure we will use as many tests as we can based on your CPU and core count, and n, the number n of tests to run in parallel. Save the changes. Restart visual studio. And you are done.(Note: You need to restart visual studio, otherwise changes will not reflect.)

Here is a sample unit test

[TestMethod]
public void TestMethod3()
{
    Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.Name);
    Thread.Sleep(2000);
}

Now I am running few test cases (11) with no parallelTestCount attribute and here is the Test Results window and summary

Test Results View - No attribute specified

Test Results summary - No attribute specified

Now I added the parallelTestCount attribute, with value of 5 and here is the Test Results window and summary, you can notice the time difference between two executions.

Test Results View - parallelTestCount Attribute specified

Test Results Summary - With parallelTestCount attribute specified

Of course there are many other factors that affect this. There is the cost of starting and tearing down the run, so you will see a lesser effect if you have a few tests. It also depends on the number of CPU/cores you have and of course how fast your tests execute.

Happy unit testing

First we need to create a class library. Set the ComVisible attribute to true in the AssemblyInfo.cs manually.

[assembly: ComVisible(true)]

Or you can do it using Properties > Application Tab and select Assembly Information, from the Assembly Information dialog, Check the Make assembly COM-Visible check box.

Make Assembly COM Visible option from Assembly Information dialog

Build the assembly. Now we need register the assembly. We can do it using RegAsm.exe. If your OS in 64 bit, then you need to use Regasm command from Framework64 folder(Normally it will be C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\ folder). For running RegAsm command it is recommended to sign the assembly. You can Sign the assembly Properties > Signing Tab.

Sign Assembly option

As RegAsm command add / update information to Windows Registry, you need to run the RegAsm command as Administrator, otherwise it will not work.

You can register the assembly using following command, like this

regasm /codebase assemblyname.dll

You can unregister the assembly using RegAsm command, like this

regasm /u assemblyname.dll

That’s it. Now you can create the object of the .net assembly in VBScript. Like this, it will add 10 and 20 using C# Add method and returns the value.

Dim calcLib
Set calcLib = CreateObject("CalcLib.Math")
Dim result
result = calcLib.Add (10 , 20)
msgbox result

And here is the C# Class, which we are invoked from VBScript.

namespace CalcLib
{
    public class Math
    {
        public int Add(int number1, int number2)
        {
            return number1 + number2;
        }
    }
}

Happy Coding

Cloaking used to prevent users from viewing specified workspace folders or for folders you do not currently need. Cloaking is useful when you are working with files from two or more branches under a common parent to prevent you from copying files unnecessarily. Finally, cloaking increases performance bandwidth and conserves local disk space by preventing folders and files not used currently from being copied to the local working folder. Today I noticed that I am missing the cloak option for a specific folder. I couldn’t find the reason, because it available for another Folder in same workspace. Later I found that it was because of the mapping of local and source folder are different. Like my TFS path was $Projects/System/Data/Binaries, it should be mapped to C:\Projects\System\Data\Binaries, but I was mapped to some other folder like C:\Projects\System\Data\DataBinaries. And then I changed it via File > Source Control > Workspaces option. After this I got the cloak option.

Cloak option of Source control explorer conext menu

Plug-in Error occured - Messagebox from Windows Live Writer

It only shows the exception message, not the stack trace or any other information which helps to find the exception. For debugging, you need to attach the Windows Live writer to Visual Studio(we may need to run visual studio as Administrator) using Attach Process feature of Visual Studio from Debug menu.

Attach Windows Live Writer to Visual Studio

Happy Programming.