Category: Tools

Not working ReSharper 3 and disabled menus issue resolved… kind of

As I see, many visitors from Google come to my blog after running query like “ReSharper 3 menus disabled”, “ReSharper 3 not working” and similar. Well, I have good news and bad news for you. Good news is, I installed ReSharper once again and it works now. The bad news however is, that I reinstalled Visual Studio first, so I’m aware that it may not be acceptable solution for some people. I needed to install VSIP Factory and my GAX kept throwing errors, so I got mad, uninstalled the whole thing (meaning Visual Studio and all things on top of it), and Installed Visual Studio Pro (Instead of Team System I had earlier), and now it works. So if you need ReSharper, and reinstalling Visual Studio is not an issue – it could help.

On the bright side for all other – JetBrains heard that it’s a serious problem, they reopened the issue with high priority, and have update scheduled for 3.0.2 release. If you can – help them by providing listing of your ‘ReSharper\v3.0\vs8.0\bin’ folder because mine for obvious reasons would not be very useful.

Hope this helps.

June 28, 2007

Regionerate – very cool plugin for VS and #Develop

Today I found (via Roy’s post) very nice plugin that works with both Visual Studio and SharpDevelop. It’s called Regionerate, is free and is developed by Omer Rauchwerger. As Omer wrote:

Regionerate (pronounced ri-jeh-neh-rate) is a new open-source tool for developers and team leaders that allows you to automatically apply layout rules on C# code.

regBefore I feel very happy to find it, since it does exactly this, what I wanted for a long time, and it’s something that neither Refactor! Pro, nor ReSharper allows you to do. At the moment it’s in its infancy (current version is 0.6beta) but even now it’s very handy, works quite fast, has integration with NAnt, and enables you to customize it’s behavior by editing xml file. It has even xml schema attached, so you’ll get intellisence and description of elements as you type.

Ok but, what exactly means ‘automatically apply layout rules’? Basically if you have a class like on the 1st screenshot that is messy it helps you do cleaning. Look at the code, it starts with private member declaration, then one method, then some property, next another field, then constructor and so on. This class is short and simple but imagine complicated class with many fields, methods, constructors, properties, events and so on. It’s very easy to make class a nightmare to find some member without ctrl+f.

Regionerate helps you keep your classes clean. If you have code like this you can right click, select Regionerate this, and let the magic happen. regMenu

rgnAfter With two clicks you can go from code like in 1st screenshot, to code like this, with elements gathered together, sorted by type or alphabetically and optionally embedded in a #region (with count of elements inside. And you can have your own, custom regions, for example if you want to keep read only properties separated from other, you can, if you have many methods (or any other elements) you can separate them by accessibility (private public, protected) you can keep static methods separately of methods overriding or hiding (with ‘new’ keyword) base class implementations – you can totally do that. Future releases will give you even more options and flexibility, so it’s definitely project worth keeping an eye on. Oh, and if you want to see it in action before you download it, here is very short screencast showing its capabilities.

June 24, 2007

ReSharper 3.0 final… still doesn’t work

Congratulations to JetBrains for pulling out new release of ReSharper. I hoped that it would resolve problem I had with beta release, but unfortunately it does not. Situation looks exactly like it was with beta release. ReSharper installer claims that installation was successful, but was it really?

resharper3

 

vspluginsStill, all options are grayed out, and that menu, and ReSharper logo are actually only signs of ReSharper’s presence. Add-in manager in Visual Studio even doesn’t list it . I reported the issue to JetBrains, but their investigation of the problem ended with one question after which they closed the case as ‘Cannot Reproduce’ the following day.

I presume that reinstalling Visual Studio would fix the problem but it’s not something I’m going to do, so I guess there will be no ReSharper for me 🙁 It’s a pity, because those few days I’ve been using it made me really like the tool. Well, if there is no way for me to try this out, maybe I’ll try Mark Miller’s Refactor! Pro… Maybe his company (DevExpress) cares more about its potential customers.

June 23, 2007

Acropolis team on Dot Net Rocks

Microsoft project Acropolis is creating a lot of buzz lately. Actually more than I would have expected, which is a good thing. I am only surprised that there are no non-Microsoft samples yet. When Silverlight (WPF/E back then) was first introduced, there were some really stunning samples made the very next day. I guess it’s just because, Silverligh mostly about what you see, while Acropolis is about what you don’t see. Guys from Acropolis team have been recently very busy blogging, and posting new samples. As a matter of fact they’ve produced so much content, and I have been so busy that I didn’t yet have time to digest it. One of things that I plan on doing tomorrow on my way to work, is listen to last episode of Dot Net Rocks, with members of Acropolis team.  If you’re interested, go get it here.

June 21, 2007

About web browsers and Apple Safari for windows in particular

Are you, dear reader one of those people who downloaded Apple Safari 3 beta for windows? I am, and for sure I will not switch to Safari. I am pretty happy with my current configuration. Primarily I use Firefox with lots of extensions, and I can’t imagine not having it. It’s basically first application I install on clear system. It may not be the fastest (actually for most sites it’s the slowest of all browsers I use), it may eat up lots of RAM and processor cycles, but user experience blows all other browsers away. To make things clear. Bare Firefox, with no extensions at all, is nice, but if I for some reason could not install extensions to it, I would use Opera, that is great product, but basically lacks one thing, that makes me use it only occasionally, for things like banking: no adblock plus. Adbock plus is THE ultimate Firefox extension. The first one I install, right after I install Firefox. To paraphrase Scott Hanselman: “Wladimir Palant should have a licence to print money”.

I have IE, like everyone using windows, but I actually almost don’t use it at all. I used it for sites that had WMV video embedded, before MS released Firefox extension to support that, and now I only use it to visit sites that were designed by troglodytes unaware of the fact, that there is word beside IE.

My friend at work has Apple MacBook pro, and he had showed me once the great RSS reader built into it, and it was basically the only reason why I downloaded the browser – to see if the windows version has this reader as well. Safari as a tool to browse web sites simply is the worst of all browsers I have. Let images speak for thousand words: below are screenshots of my blog, in all 4 browsers, in 800×600.

firefox

ie

opera

safari

On all 3 first browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera) site looks basically the same. IE folds blog subtitle few lines earlier than Firefox and Opera, but user experience stays the same. Now let’s take a look at our new born ‘hero’. Blog title: gone, blog subtitle: gone as well, post titles: same as before. What else – look at the tag cloud: some tags were changed to underline. Steve Jobs said that it is wicked fast – well I didn’t see this speed. I didn’t measure the time of load, but it feels that even Firefox is faster (on those several sites I visited).

I will give a try to the built in RSS reader, that looks very promising, but except for this: Safari is one big disappointment and misunderstanding. It’s like a step back, even comparing to IE7. Not recommended.

June 16, 2007

Why not support SharpDevelop?

In his great post about ORMs, EF, eSQL and data access in general, Sahil Malik wrote something about Visual Studio 2005, that I would like to comment on.

  • The VS2005 IDE is stuck in a rather unfortunate monopolistic situation.
    • There is no incentive for any other company to create a better IDE because the IDE costs some serious $$$ to create, and MSFT gives it away for peanuts. It is impossible to compete with such a model, so I don’t expect google or adobe to come out with a Visual Studio.NET that is better. 
    • And I don’t expect the community to do it either, because when people who have tried to improve certain SKUs of the IDE get sued, it serves as a very big discouragement for the community. While I am terribly disappointed to see lawyers involved in suing someone who is really a developer/member of the community/one of us, I don’t want MSFT lawyers on my ass either, so I’ll just stay quiet on the whole “who is right” portion of that incident. I just wish nobody gets hurt in the process, and I wish both parties settle on a mutually amicable solution.

    Well, Sahil – unfortunately you’re right, no other company is going to develop IDE that would compete with VS. That’s a sad thing, because no competition means stagnation. There is however one thing that amazes me. There are commercial IDEs in Java world, in PHP world, but despite of this they have free, open-source IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse, Aptana (that works also as Eclipse’s plugin), with big, active community developing plugins and main products. As a result, those free IDEs are not worse, and often better, than commercial ones (to make things clear: it’s my hardcore Java friend’s opinion – not mine).

    If Java people can contribute to community and support development of the most basic tool every developer uses, why all .NET world seems to be happy with VS? It strikes me why very good open-source IDE we have – SharpDevelop, gets so little attention, both in support, and in creating buzz.

    Come on – it has most of the tools you need, out of the box support for other OSS tools (nDoc, nUNIT, nAnt and more), so why not use it? Almost no refactorings you say? Did I mention that it’s open-source? Why then not support it and add something from you? SharpDevelop is MUCH underrated, and if it was other way around, I think it would be a win-win situation. People using it, would get yet better product, with more capabilities, and people staying with VS would benefit too, since if VS had real competitor, it would put pressure on Microsoft to really improve it.

    And one more thing: if you’re a developer (I guess, most people coming here are Wink) you can contribute to the project, either by writing some code for the IDE itself, or by writing a plugin, without fear that you will be sued for it.

    June 10, 2007

    Acropolis Hello World

    Yesterday I gave Orcas Visual Studio 2008 beta 1 another try. At first, when it came out, I deleted it, due to free hard disc space shortage, and it’s annoying errors. I actually downloaded it (which took me almost entire day on my 1.5Mb wire) solely to play with new Acropolis bits. I don’t have anything interesting to share yet, since I finished installation and VM Setup quite late, but I must say that my first impression is very nice. I’m a little bit confused by the Visual Studio Designer, that is like nothing I know from CAB and SCSF, but except for that I noticed many similarities. I’ll play a little bit more with it when I’m back from work. In the meanwhile, If you want to get started with Acropolis, you can find links to many good sources at Brad Adam’s blog. He has links to nice sample RSS reader application.

    I think that Acropolis is THE think that will make me finally want to learn this whole XAML thing.

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    June 8, 2007

    Acropolis to replace CAB/SCSF

    I like CAB and SCSF, I really do, although I’m by no means expert at it, I used it in one, not so big project so far, when I moved over the hard part (getting used to naming conventions and getting to know how the things are organized and how they fit together) I really liked it. When I learned about Acropolis I got the feeling that Microsoft just said: “This is the way you are supposed to do smart client applications”, and that it means good bye to CAB.

    Glenn Block just said it clear and loud:

    With the announcement of Acropolis, we currently have no further plans for SCSF releases.

    He also said:

    Acropolis is not going to ship for some time.

    So it should cut any speculations that Acropolis may be shipping in Orcas (Visual Studio 2008) timeframe. Stay tuned for more news.

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    June 6, 2007

    Visual Studio 2008 Shell and Sharp Develop for Applications

    The think that drew attention in last couple of days is the new Visual Studio 2008 Shell. What it is, is basically bare bones core of Visual Studio that Microsoft is going do release (for free I believe) , so that you could build your own VS-like Apps on top of that. Nice idea isn’t it? That’s something that Eclipse has been allowing for some time now, and as I just learned, Sharp Develop too. I found this, almost one year old post from Sharp Develop dev team, announcing Sharp Develop for Applications, that utilizes the same idea.

    June 6, 2007

    My 3 cents about ALT.NET; do it Microsoft way vs do it the right way

    David Laribee coined the term ALT.NET. What it means, and why it’s going to be the_hot_word? David basically explained it in 4 points:

    What does it mean to be to be ALT.NET? In short it signifies:

    1. You’re the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
    2. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
    3. You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
    4. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.)

     

    It narrows down to: “Stay open-minded”. Roy, took it one step further, by creating a list of, what is hot and what’s not in ALT.NET people world. As he wrote, that list is not his point of view, and he disagrees with some points there. Then Sam, reproduced Roy’s list with changes to reflect his point of view.  Here’s his version (black color – Roy’s initial list, red/brown: Sam’s changes)

    Hot

    Not

    Castle, ActiveRecord,
    NHibernate, some Application Blocks, Repositories

    DataSets, Dataset Designer, Entity Framework, MS Application Blocks

    MVC,NUnit,MonoRail, MBUnit, SCSF

    Web Forms, SCSF, VSTS, MSTest

    XP, TDD, Scrum

    MSF Agile, MSF For CMMI

    Evolutionary Design and Development

    Big Design Up Front

    Ruby + IronRuby, Python + IronPyton, DLR, Silverlight(?)

    ?

    OR\M (NHibernate, LLBLGen  Wilson OR/M, etc..), LINQ to SQL

    DLinq, Data Access Block, DataSets, Plain ADO. NET

    Open Source (Mono, SourceForge), CodePlex + Subversion

    Application Blocks, CodePlex

    MVC and MVP (RoR, MonoRail..), MVP/MVC in CAB + SCSF

    Web Forms, CAB, Smart Client Factory

    CVS, SVN

    VSS, VSTS Source Control

    Build Automation and CI
    (CI Factory, NAnt, FinalBuilder, FB Server, CruiseControl..)

    Team Build

    TDD and Unit Testing
    NUnit, MbUnit, RhinoMocks, NMock, TypeMock

    MSTest for unit testing, VSTS

    Subtext, DasBlog, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, FeedBurner

    Microsoft MSN Spaces, Community Server(?)

    Simplicity in Design, YAGNI, Do the Simplest Thing

    P&P

    Working at Google Working in a company that does all of the XP pratices

    Working at MS

    Google Gears, Occasionallly Connected Smart Clients

    Smart Client, MS Ajax

    .NET 3.X (WF, WPF. Silverlight)

    .NET 2.0

    DI, IoC, StructureMap, Windsor/MicroKernel, Spring for .NET

    Object Builder

    Conferences:
    OSCon, RubyCon, Code Camps, DevTeach..

    VSLive, TechEd, DevConnections

    I to some extent agree with Sam, but there are some point I’d like to comment on:

    • Why P&P is not hot? I don’t get it, it’s not a mainstream group at Microsoft, they created some tools that people use, and praise, like software factories, CAB… They’re the closest team at Microsoft to ALT.NET, they’re one of the few (or the only) team at Microsoft that releases nUnit tests along with the code, heck – they release many tools I consider to be ALT.NET, so keeping them on the dark side of the force is misunderstanding.
    • About working at Google vs. working at Microsoft. It’s hype. Google is overhyped. And what’s in Google for .NET developer, c’mon! Sam recognized it with his change, I’d change it even further to: “Working at company that does agile development (probably using ALT.NET tools)” vs. one that doesn’t period.
    • Google Gears – what’s so great about it? for .NET developer? I think Roy has a very good point about it.

    With the rest of the list I more or less agree. And what do you think?

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    June 5, 2007