I have previously not managed to get the Windows Phone 7 emulator running on my dev install (Windows 7 on Parallels 7). After upgrading to Parallels 8, installing the latest Parallels update for Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 7.1.1 SDK update. I have managed to get it working a little more. It still takes ages to startup: 2-3 minutes of “Windows Emulator is doing a full OS boot” before the Windows Phone logo shows […] Read more »
Windows Phone 8 Emulator May Work in VMWare Fusion
So after trying to get my MacBook Pro up and running as a dev machine for Windows Phone 8, both using Parallels 8 (which is my standard VM environment) and Bootcamp, I have resorted to using a Sony Vaio instead. My current MacBook is dead-in-the water as a fully working WP8 dev machine. The final knockout blow was when I realised that the WP8 emulator requires hardware-assisted virtualisation using SLAT and that my 2009 MacBook […] Read more »
Windows Phone 8 Emulator on MacBook Pro – No SLAT
Trying desperately to try out the Windows Phone 8 emulator… I am running a mid 2009 MacBook Pro with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. The WP8 emulator requires Hyper-V on Windows 8 and Hyper-V requires that the processor supports virtualization through Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). Intel Core i5 &, i7 should support it so a newer MacBook Pro might work, but for me that makes it impossible to run the WP8 emulator […] Read more »
Windows Phone 8 SDK on Mac OSX Parallels 8
Bad news for all us developers who use virtual machines to develop Windows software. The new WP8 emulator is a Hyper-V machine and will only run on non virtualised hosts. So my Mac OSX Parallels 8 dev setup with Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 installed in a virtual machine will allow me to install the Windows Phone 8 SDK and all the tools but the phone emulator will not start. As far as I […] Read more »
Finally WP8 SDK is Available
Watching the Build 2012 keynote – finally the Windows Phone 8 SDK has been released! Get it at dev.windowsphone.com A few new pretty cool features coming in WP8. Read more »
Windows Phone 8 SDK
Windows Phone 8 was officially released yesterday the 29th and yet the Windows Phone 8 SDK is still not available… Aaargh…. Rumours say that the SDK will be released today at Build 2012 – lets see if they can finally give us all the tools we need! Channel 9 will be streaming sessions at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012 and the keynote, which is usually where all the major announcements are made, is scheduled for 9:00 which translates to 17:00 here in Europe […] Read more »
Wrestling with WIX UI and Properties
I have been trying to get a WIX installer behaving the way I want it to for a couple of days, unfortunately I am not an MSI expert and have had a hard time understanding why things done work as I want. The installer is for an upgrade of a license key and copy protection product that I have created. Using Netsparkle the product gets automatically updated when a new version is available. I also […] Read more »
Eazfuscator no longer free
Unfortunately I have just found out that my favorite (free) obfuscator and library packager Eazfuscator has stopped offering a free version. Not only that but the license for the paid version is $399 for the first year and then $149 per year after that for each developer. While I am sure that Oleksiy Gapotchenko and his team are going to make some money on this they are also alienating a large portion of their potential buyers […] Read more »
Windows Phone 8 SDK Release?
Like many other software developers I am awaiting the release of Windows Phone 8 SDK which didn’t ship with VS2012. According to rumors online, among others Australia’s TechEd conference website, it will be released on September 7th or 12th! This will be very exciting and obviously has been highly anticipated by software developers for months. There has been no CTP of any kind or public preview as far as I have seen – other than […] Read more »
Automatically Resolving Secondary Assembly References With MSBuild and TFS Build
There is a known issue/feature with MSBuild which also affects TFS build, since it uses MSBuild to compile, where secondary assembly references are not identified and added to csc and vbc tasks. The exact details are explained here, on MSDN and Stackoverflow with various workarounds and on Microsoft Connect. Visual Studio handles the issues automatically by referencing any secondary references that are required, so you don’t see the problem in Visual Studio but may get compile […] Read more »