Monthly Archives: March 2018

[Tutorial] Integrate Visual Studio Code with Visual Studio Team Services

Here's a quick way to integrate Visual Studio Code with Visual Studio Team Services.

  1. Create a new Team Project
    1. Instructions on how to create a new Team Project are outlined here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/accounts/create-account-msa-or-work-student
  2. Create a Personal Access Token
    1. Instructions on how to generate a personal access token are outlined here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/accounts/use-personal-access-tokens-to-authenticate
  3. Download and install Git: https://git-scm.com/download/
  4. Download Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/Download
  5. Inside of Visual Studio Code, click on the Extensions button
  6. Search the marketplace for Visual Studio Team Services and select Install button
  7. Once the extension has been Installed, click on the Reload button.
  8. Inside of Visual Studio Code, press F1 on your keyboard and type Git: Clone

  9. Once prompted, type in the URL to your Team Project and click on the Open Repository button
  10. Once in the repository, type: Team: Sign In  Select Provide an Access token manually, enter the Personal Access Token from Visual Studio Online and press Enter on your keyboard
  11. From there, go ahead and make a change to any of the files in your Repository
  12. Click on the Source Control icon in Visual Studio Code
  13. Select Commit All
    1. Note: You will be prompted to type in a commit message, go ahead and type in what you changed

  14. Either select Push from the ... button in the top right, or click the Push button in the bottom left corner
  15. Validate you see the committed changes in Visual Studio Team Services

Setting up a new Raspberry Pi via SSH

This is my super subpar tutorial on how to quickly setup a new Raspberry Pi via SSH (no mouse/keyboard/monitor directly attached to the device).

  1. Download the latest copy of the operating system (I personally prefer Raspbian Stretch Lite for the most minimal setup): https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
  2. Extract the download so you have a copy of the ****-**-**-raspbian-stretch-lite.img file
  3. Download Etcher to burn the image to an SD Card: https://etcher.io/
  4. Download a copy of Putty if you don't have a way to ssh: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
  5. Open the SD card you just flashed and you should see the "boot" partition.  Create a file called ssh (no file extension or data needs to be written to the file)
    1. Note: ssh is disabled on all OS builds starting November 16 forward -- see here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/
  6. Default credentials:
    1. Username: pi
    2. Password: raspberry
  7. Quick commands
    1. Configure Raspberry PI specific settings: sudo raspi-config
    2. Proper Shutdown (-h) / Restart (-r): sudo shutdown -h now

Unlike most laptops/desktops, the Raspberry Pi doesn't have a shutdown button, so always use the commands above to prevent SD Card corruption!