The art of simplicity

Today a colleague contacted me because she got an error when trying to build a specific solution inside Visual Studio. The compilation process failed on contacting the internal Azure DevOps Artifacts nuget feed. Instead she got the following error message: NU1301 Unable to load the service index for source  I tried to load and build the same project but I couldn’t reproduce the issue. There are multiple reasons why this error message appears. I suggested here to try any of the following: Restart Visual Studio: always a good one to try first Run dotnet restore in Interactive Mode : Run the dotnet restore command in interactive mode can help resolve the issue. Clear NuGet Cache : Sometimes, clearing the NuGet cache can help. You can do this by running the following command in the terminal: nuget locals all -clear Neither of my suggestions seemed to help. In the end she was able to solve the issue by removing the local nuget.config file. As she had the package

In the world of software development, safeguarding sensitive data is paramount, especially when it comes to configuration settings that may include passwords, API keys, and connection strings. ASP.NET Core provides a robust mechanism for managing such sensitive data during development through the use of a secrets.json file. This feature is part of a broader configuration system that allows developers to store and retrieve application settings in a variety of ways, including environment variables, command-line arguments, and external files. The secrets.json file is a secure and convenient place to store confidential information that is specific to your development environment. It is not checked into source control, which means your secrets are not exposed when your code is shared or published. Instead, the secrets.json file resides in a system-protected user profile folder on your machine, keeping your secrets outside your main source tree avoiding that you accidently check-in and sha

Today I want to point out a new feature that was recently introduced in Github Copilot chat; support for multiple large language models. It is now possible to choose between different models so that you can choose the model that aligns best with the needs you have in your specific project. Models that are supported today are GPT-4o, o1, o1-mini and Claud Sonnet 3.5. Remark: To be exact, I have to point out that Github Copilot was leveraging multiple LLMs already for different use cases. Let me show you how this feature works… VS Code Open Github Copilot Chat inside VSCode Click on the ‘Pick model’ dropdown and select a different model   That’s it! Visual Studio Open Github Copilot Chat inside Visual Studio Click on the ‘Pick model’ dropdown and select a different model   That’s it! Remark: I noticed that the Claud Sonnet 3.5 model is not yet available inside Visual Studio. More information https://github.blog/changelog/2024-09-19-

Make sure you are well rested as the next 3 days you'll need all your energy to learn about the latest and greatest in .NET at .NET Conf 2024 , a free virtual event from November 12 until November 14. This year you’ll discover the newest features and enhancements in .NET 9, including cloud-native development , AI integration , and performance improvements .   Join me and many others to learn from the .NET team members and the broader .NET community.  Don't forget to collect your free digital swag , enter your details to win a price bag from the sponsors or participate in the challenge to also win a price. More information .NET Conf 2024 What's new in .NET 9 | Microsoft Learn

At one of my customers, we are still (happily) using Microsoft Web Deploy to deploy our web applications to IIS. This works great and is all nicely automated and integrated in our Azure DevOps pipelines. Until the moment it no longer works. Something that happened last month when trying to deploy one of our projects. A look at the web deploy logs showed us the following error message: Web deployment task failed. ((2/11/2024 15:00:08) An error occurred when the request was processed on the remote computer.)(2/11/2024 15:00:08) An error occurred when the request was processed on the remote computer.Unable to perform the operation. Please contact your server administrator to check authorization and delegation settings. Time to contact the server administrator... Unfortunately that’s my team in this case. So let’s investigate. We logged in on the web server and checked the event logs. There we got some extra details: A tracing deployment agent exception occurred that was propagat

In software development, change requests(CR) often get a bad reputation. As developers and architects it can feel frustrating to have to redesign and change existing features(especially if the change request has a big impact on the existing system). However, we should see them as a positive sign for a product's success, evolution, and continued relevance. Let’s explore why… Reason 1 - Our system is used! The fact that we get a CR means that at least someone tried our system and even better they see value in using it further because they want to improve it. When users ask for changes, it's because they're actively engaging with the software. They’re uncovering real-world use cases and scenarios that may not have been anticipated during initial design. This feedback loop confirms that the software is doing something valuable—and that users believe it can do even more. Reason 2 – We have learned something! Software, by its nature, is built to be flexible and adaptabl