The VBUG .NET Conference is to be held on the 17th and 18th October 2006 at the Microsoft UK Campus at Thames Valley Park in Reading. The conference is free to VBUG members.

I am delighted to say that I will be presenting two sessions:-

Automating Builds Using MSBuild

MSBuild is the new build engine from Microsoft. It is included with the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Vista and is designed to build software. The software can be based on .NET Framework 2.0, 1.x or no .NET Framework at all. This session describes how to create build scripts which will automate the building of your software for development and deployment purposes. It covers the basic elements of MSBuild project files, how MSBuild works and more advanced subjects such as writing your own build tasks. This session is relevant to all developers who develop using Microsoft platforms.

Writing Custom FxCop Rules

FxCop is a static analysis tool which is included with Visual Studio Team System 2005 and is available for download for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio.NET 2003. FxCop reads one or more assemblies and applies coding rules to them. FxCop includes a library of existing rules and allows you to write your own. This session covers the subject of writing your own FxCop rules to enforce your own development standards. You will learn how to create rules using different approaches. The first approach is using a simple but laborious instruction walk. The second approach is more sophisticated and uses FxCop’s introspection engine’s "visit" methods. With this knowledge in place more custom rules are shown to illustrate how to implement many rules analyzing instructions, types and resources.

Hope to see you there.