The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘.NET 2.0’ Category

Visual Studio: break on all CLR exceptions, not only the unhandled ones.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/08/29

When you have a layered exception handling (for instance to translate general exceptions into domain or business exceptions, and want to control which exceptions trickle up to where), then from a debugger perspective, most exceptions  actually handled.

However debugging those layers, it often makes sens to be able to break where all these exceptions are actually fired.

The screenshots (click on each to enlarge) are for Visual Studio 2010, but it works in any Visual Studio version and (since it is a debugger feature, not a language one) for all .NET languages I tried so far.

Note that as of Visual Studio 2010, if you disable these, it still breaks when exceptions are thrown from code called through reflection. This seems intentional and has 3 workarounds, but it might have been reverted in Visual Studio 2012.

This is a setting stored on the Solution level (.suo file) in Visual studio which by default is turned off. Luckily, it is very easy to turn this feature on, for instance for CLR (.NET Common Language Runtime) exceptions:

  1. In the “Debug” menu, choose “Exceptions” (or Press Ctrl+D, E),
  2. Wait a few moments for the dialog to appear
  3. Put a checkmark in the “Thrown” column for the “Comon Language Runtime Exceptions” row.
  4. Click the “OK” button. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, F#, Prism, Software Development, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 7.0, VB.NET 7.1, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0 | 1 Comment »

.NET/C#: some starting posts on the `yield` keyword.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/08/08

Peter Leslie Morris asked if Delphi already incorporates the `yield` keyword that C# had introduced in C# 2.

Delphi doesn’t, but for the people interested what it does in C#:

Basically `yield` is syntactic sugar to make it a lot easier to write methods that return enumerators of some sort.

It delays (hence the yield keyword) execution until the enumerator as actually being used.

It is one of the hardest C# things to master (it is the most complicated transformation in the compiler, followed by anonymous methods – well maybe with the exception of async/await), but it can be very useful.

VB.NET doesn’t have it either (thanks André!) has it too, but and also has iterator blocks.

Some start posts on yield:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 10 Comments »

CLR week on the Old New Thing has started: first one about Static Constructors

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/08/06

Finally a new CLR Week on the Old New Thing.

It starts with via: Why does BitConverter.LittleEndian return false on my x86 machine? which is all about static constructors.

So you should read these as well:

(Note that virtually anything from Eric Lippert and Jon Skeet it worth reading anyway).

--jeroen

via: Why does BitConverter.LittleEndian return false on my x86 machine? – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Development, Jon Skeet, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

It works! Install Visual Studio 2010 AFTER Visual Studio 2012 – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/08/06

Never thought this would work so smoothly: Install Visual Studio 2010 AFTER Visual Studio 2012 – Stack Overflow.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | 7 Comments »

.NET/C# – InvalidCastException for two Objects of the same type (via: G+/Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/08/03

If you ever get something similar to

InvalidCastException: [A]Person cannot be cast to [B]Person.

then you are (or more precise: your process is) probably loading the same assembly twice, but from a different context.

.NET allows that, and for reason (side by side loading, appdomains, etc).

Delphi doesn’t (thanks Warren Postma for noticing). But a mistake you see quite often is that Delphi developers try to load the same Delphi type from both an EXE and a DLL wondering why they don’t match. If you want to spread your types in Delphi, then use BPLs (run-time packages) for that. BPLs are similar to .NET assemblies, but cannot be loaded in memory twice.

–jeroen

via c# – InvalidCastException for two Objects of the same type – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development, VB.NET, VB.NET 10.0, VB.NET 11.0, VB.NET 8.0, VB.NET 9.0, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »

Reminder to Self: Messagepack / BSON / ProtocolBuffers

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/25

Need to find/create a Delphi compatible version of Messagepack or BSON.

–jeroen

via Serializing and deserializing (packing/unpacking) to a file and/or memorystream with MessagePack in C# ».

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Delphi, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | 4 Comments »

.NET/C# assemblies and namespaces

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/23

Ever since I started .NET programming after .NET Beta 1 Arrived in 2001, I found that many people struggle with the relation between assemblies and namespaces.

So I was glad that I posted this answer about 2.5 years ago on StackOverflow. Below is the slightly edited form:

People are easily confused by the namespace/assembly thing, as it decouples the concept of where your code is physically located (the assembly) and how you reference it:

  • logically reference is by using the namespace
  • physical reference is by referencing the assembly

I usually explain the relation using the word contribute:

  1. An assembly can contribute to multiple namespaces.
    For instance, the System.Data.dll assembly contributes to namespaces like System.Data (e.g. the class System.Data.DataTable) and Microsoft.SqlServer.Server (e.g. the class Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlContext).
  2. Multiple assemblies can contribute to a single namespace.
    For instance both the System.Data.dll assembly and the System.Xml.dll assembly contribute to the System.Xml namespace.
    Which means that if you use the System.Xml.XmlDataDocument class from your project, you need to reference the System.Data.dll assembly.
    And if you use the System.Xml.XmlDocument class, you need to reference the System.Xml.dll from your project.

(the above examples are .NET 4.0, but likely hold for previous .NET versions as well).

Danny Thorpe explained the concept of namespace and internal really well, so I won’t go into detail about those.

Ever since I started .NET courses 10 years ago, I draw a table explaining assemblies and namespaces like this:

Assemblies contributing to namespaces
Assembly Namespaces it contributes to
System.Data Microsoft.SQLServer.Server System.Xml
↑ Example classes
System.Data.dll DataTable SqlContext XmlDataDocument
System.Xml.dll XmlDocument

–jeroen

via: C# assemblies, whats in an assembly? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, .NET CF, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Igor Ostrovsky: C# – The C# Memory Model in Theory and Practice;

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/16

Just found out that Igor Ostrovsky wrote two really nice articles on .NET memory management as part of his great series of other .NET articles there:

  1. C# – The C# Memory Model in Theory and Practice.
  2. C# – The C# Memory Model in Theory and Practice, Part 2.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Using ILDASM to determine the .NET Framework version an Assembly/DLL requires (via StackOverflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/11

Josh Stodola wrote a nice answer on the Determine .NET Framework version for dll – Stack Overflow question for using ILDASM to show the required .NET Framework/CLR version for an assembly.

From that, I wrote this tiny batch file:

ildasm.exe %1 /metadata[=MDHEADER] /text /noil | find "Metadata section:"

It gives output like this:

ildasm.exe C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\System.XML.dll /metadata[=MDHEADER] /text /noil | find "Metadata section:"
// Metadata section: 0x424a5342, version: 1.1, extra: 0, version len: 12, version: v4.0.30319

The cool thing is that older ILDASM versions work on assemblies requiring newer .NET Frameworks/CLRs.

So it is relatively future proof.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

.NET/log4net configuration: LevelMatchFilter with DenyAllFilter to discard several log levels within a range

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/06/27

log4net configuration can be a tad intimidating at first.

When you do not want to log all levels, and the levels you want to log are not noncontinuous, then you can combine the LevelMatchFilter with a DenyAllFilter.

The filter classes in the log4net do not provide much help on this, but the filters section in the log4net manual is better.

This StackOverflow question has a very nice answer explaining it: Discarding several log levels within a range with log4net.

–jeroen

via: Discarding several log levels within a range with log4net – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »