Archive for Visual-Studio tag
How to spot a Visual Studio 2005 SP1 installation
If like me you have a couple of machines, a few virtual machines and secondary installations such as Express editions (for XNA of course) you can easily loose track of which have been patched with service pack 1. Especially if you also messed around with the SP1 beta.
Help > About from Visual Studio 2005 can tell us – cryptically…
No service pack – Version 8.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
Service pack 1 beta – Version 8.0.50727.363 (SP.050727-3600)
Service pack 1 – Version 8.0.5727.762 (SP.050727-7600)
Thanks to Rikkus and Gringod for providing their about dialogs!
Burge points out that clicking Show updates inside Add/Remove Programs reveals the SP1 update nested beneath Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 xxx Edition – although it doesn’t tell you if you still have the beta installed.
[)amien
Eight things I hate about Visual Studio 2005
Whilst Visual Studio is quite a capable IDE it isn’t perfect – here is my personal top 10 list of things I hate about it. I’ve kept the gripes to the IDE itself – the issues I have with .NET Framework deserve a post of their own some time.
1. Go To Definition does not work between languages
Sometimes your solution has to be a mixed language one – you know the odd VB.Net class library that nobody wants to rewrite in C#.
Hit Go To Definition on a call to this library however and you won’t find yourself there in the VB.Net code – oh no it’s straight to the Object Browser for you.
2. IntelliSense ignores aliased name spaces
Name spaces were introduced to help reduce name collisions but occasionally you need to use both classes with the same name. You get two choices in .NET – you can either fully-qualify them making your code incredibly verbose and difficult to scan through or you can use an aliased name space – e.g. using SNM = System.Net.Mime;
Annoyingly IntelliSense will always use the fully qualified name even if you start with the alias. Typing SNM.ContentType content = new will trigger off IntelliSense to unhelpfully suggest System.Net.Mime.ContentType().
3. Dependent-upon project items aren’t usefully exposed
.NET 2 brought partial classes to the table and Visual Studio made a stab at using them for the Form designers by sticking the generated code in a .Designer file that nests below the file in the Solution Explorer.
This is achieved by the .Designer file gaining a <DependentUpon> tag to link it to its owner. If you want to use this for your own generated files you’d better get used to editing project files in Notepad because the IDE won’t help.
4. The SDK/AddIn API is awful
If you feel like addressing any of the shortcomings in Visual Studio you can extend it using their SDK which allows you to write your own AddIn – providing you can get your head around the most obscure and awful API ever.
5. Not all project types support automation
Some of the less popular project types (e.g. Database) don’t support the parts of the automation API they are supposed to.
This means if you’ve managed to get your head around the SDK you now find all your hard efforts don’t always work.
6. The syntax editor does not support italics
Why oh why doesn’t the syntax editor support being able to italicise a font? I’d much prefer my comments displayed in italics. If Borland’s Delphi supported it in the 90′s why can’t Visual Studio 10 years later?
My Envy Code R programming font fakes italics for use within Visual Studio!
7. Document tab area doesn’t like staying still
The document tab at the top of the screen is where you switch between the various documents. The only problem is it jumps up and down depending on how many tool bars as standard the designer/editor for that file type has so you switch once and then end up hitting a random tool bar button if you quickly decide to move on to another file.
8. No re-distributable elements
Want to put syntax highlighting in your product? Better go buy some third-party components.
Visual Studio style docking? Third party-component.
Sure you can licence the basic Visual Studio IDE for your own languages and code – providing you have very deep pockets.
Wrapping it up
I’ve downloaded the January CTP of Orcas but I doubt it will address any of my bug-bears.
What would be cool is an open-source IDE for .NET development written in .NET that exposes the syntax highlighter and parser trees with a much better plug-in system and the Office 2007 style ribbon.
I wonder how the SharpDevelop guys are getting on…
[)amien
LINQ in C# Web Applications
I’m a big fan of the Web Application type that was previously available as an add-on to Visual Studio 2005 but thankfully got promoted to a standard citizen with Service Pack 1.
So with a little more time on my hands lately I’ve been delving into the wonder that is LINQ – part of the forthcoming Orcas release of technologies.
For those who’ve been living under a rock LINQ is a set of extensions to .NET that let you perform queries on objects in much the same way you would do on a database with SQL (except the syntax is backwards by comparison).
Now while the LINQ Preview CTP installs LINQ projects for C# Class Libraries, Windows Applications and Console Applications it inconveniently misses-out Web Applications!
You can drop this ZIP file in your %UserProfile%\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C# to gain a new ASP.NET LINQ Web Application project type for you to start with as often as you like as shown:
Or if you want to modify an existing Web Application simply:
- Open up the .csproj file in Notepad and replace
<Import Project=”$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets” />
with
<Import Project=”$(ProgramFiles)\LINQ Preview\Misc\Linq.targets” /> - Add project references to:
System.Data.DLinq
System.Query
System.Xml.XLinq
Hopefully more LINQ related posts as I get to grips with it.
[)amien
Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Beta experiences
Like most people I’ve run into my fair share of oddities and problems in Visual Studio 2005 including the dreaded VB compiler dying a death on reasonable-sized projects so I jumped at the chance to get my hands on the beta of SP1.
There are several versions of the service pack including one for Visual Studio 2005, one for each of the Express editions and one for the Team Foundation Server. My experiences here are with the 350MB SP1 beta for Visual Studio 2005.
Installer
The first major gripe is with the installer itself. It’s slow, it needs 2.5GB of free space to apply the SP and it doesn’t tell you to uninstall Web Application Projects until several minutes in so make sure you:
- Don’t need to use Visual Studio 2005 for about 25 minutes
- Have uninstalled Web Application Projects (you can keep Web Deployment Projects tho)
- Have over 2.5GB of free space once the installer is on your system
If you’re short of disk space you could try turning on the Compress contents option on c:\windows\installer if you don’t mind waiting a little longer.
What’s New?
Web Application Projects are now built in!
What’s Fixed?
The list of fixes is quite comprehensive although many of the KB articles state ‘Info Not Yet Available’. It also includes all the previous hot-fixes to VS2005 (many of which are available on request only).
There are some interesting ones regarding performance of large C++ and VB.Net projects/solutions.
Interested?
If you feel like giving it a shot head over to to MS Connect and grab it but be quick, the beta ends October 31st. The beta is available in English and Japanese only.
[)amien