Archive for the ‘.NET’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/05
For some version management features, I needed to find the attribute values of loaded assemblies. Googling around, I didn’t find many nice solutions. In fact the solutions I found didn’t work well (AssemblyName is not an Attribute!), and/or contained lots of duplicate code, or uses RegEx and other string comparisons (lesson: if you can do it with either string comparison or proper type checking, use the latter). Below is the code; here some explanation:
- It uses a C# translation of the RetrieveLinkerTimestamp function found through Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror) which was published by Kevin Gearing and determines the linker timestamp from the PE Header. It corrects the time into your time zone. The C# version has two overloads (one with an Assembly parameter, the other with a string filePath), and the latter now contains some exception handling just in case you pass it nonsense.
- The RunOnAssemblyAttribute generic method takes a T parameter of type Attribute, then runs the Action<T> action if that attribute is found in the Assembly assembly. It retreived the attribute using the Assembly.GetCustomAttributes method.
- When a null parameter is passed, it gets the information from the executing assembly (if you want it to be another one, just change the code if you want it to)
An alternative way of getting the executable name is at the very bottom: you need it when your assembly is loaded from an unmanaged application (GetEntryAssembly then returns null)
- The constructor runs it on all known assembly related attributes in the System.Reflection namespace, calling RunOnAssemblyAttribute with an action that fills the property for each existing attribute (you wish all those attributes would have a Value property, but their property names are specific for each attribute). For non existing attributes, the default property values are used (which incidently are the default values for those attributes anyway).
- There are a couple of casts (for instance AssemblyNameFlags) as the underlying attribute contains a constructor with that parameter (in this case AssemblyFlagsAttribute), but stores it in an integer without providing a cast property. Maybe there should be proper type checking; that is left as an exercise…
- The constructor also fills a couple of non attribute properties – AssemblyName – LinkerTimestamp
- The Name property is derived from the AssemblyName.Name property if it exists
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/04
I’m a keyboard fan, so recently I have put up a new Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts category and tried to add all old relevant posts to it (staying organized is time consuming, but in the end it pays back by being able to find back stuff faster).
At conferences, presentations, and clients people often wonder “how do you get to such-and-such IDE feature so quickly” and the answer usually is: be sure you know your keyboard shortcuts. Which isn’t easy, as documentation for them is often spread out, and to find the information: you have to know how the underlying actions are called.
A long time ago (I think it was in version 2005) Visual Studio introduced Smart Tags. Most posts talk only about one kind of Smart Tags, but the Visual Studio IDE has two kinds:
- A tiny triangle in the designer
- A combobox drop-down button like control in the code editor
Both listen to these keyboard shortcuts (most cheat sheets miss at least one of these, but you can find them at Pre-defined keyboard shortcuts and at the VS2008 C# keyboard cheatsheet):
- Shift-Alt-F10
The shortcut is called View.ShowSmartTag, View.ObjectBrowserGoToSearchCombo
- Ctrl-. (yes, the . is a period)
The shortcut seems to be called Edit.Generate
The pictures below show the Smart Tag in action.
Oh BTW: the red squiggly lines and some of the other adornments in the screenshot are from CodeRush, one of the most keyboard-centric additions to Visual Studio I know.
–jeroen
Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/03
One of my Visual Studio 2010 VMs gives me an error when recording a temporary macro:
---------------------------
Vsaenv
---------------------------
Cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
Followed by: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/28
Earlier this week, I already wrote about different idioms in different IDEs.
Here is another one, again a feature I don’t use often: getting a fresh GUID in the IDE. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools | 7 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/27
Recently I had to do a quick removal of duplicate lines in bunch of text files.
A quick search revealed that back in 2009, John Skeet came to the rescue with a couple of examples (:
--jeroen
via: C# Remove Duplicate Lines From Text File? – Stack Overflow.
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Jon Skeet, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/26
Switching back and forth between mainly Delphi and C#, sometimes it is hard to remember which idiom works best in each environment.
Recently, I had to dupe a lot of tab characters for some Tab-Delimited interface to an archaic system.
I remembered the Delphi idiom: use the DupeString function as about Delphi explains (yes, I know: it dupes more than just characters).
In C#, these work best for me:
Small code sample of the first way (thanks CMS):
static string Tabs(int n)
{
return new String('\t', n);
}
–jeroen
via: .net – Best way to repeat a character in C# – Stack Overflow.
Oh BTW: I have reduced my StackOverflow presence. It looks like the success of StackOverflow made them instantiate many moderators. A lot of those moderators work under the mantra “we follow the rules strictly, and favour punishment over encouragement” (some even talk about “changing heritage“). That’s a real pity, as I see a lot of StackOverflow users get scared by the very active downvoting, question/answer closing and even deletion of material that is in essence valuable, if it were edited up a bit. Deleting content is always bad, as it increases the link rot that StackOverflow are trying to prevent in questions/answers as per their FAQ. Links are the foundation of the web.
Alas, devoting real attention to the quality of StackOverflow requires putting real energy in it, which for some of the moderators seems to be too much to ask.
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Delphi, Development, Pingback, Software Development, Stackoverflow | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/21
I’m in the midst of converting a suite of WinForms C# projects from a range of .NET versions (1.x till 3.x) to 4 totalling some million lines of code.
One of the problems is that some people hacked together some splash screen stuff using multi-threading, doing all sorts of things that was forbidden in .NET 1 (and broke in .NET 2+).
On my research list for getting this to work:
- Mahin Gupta | Winforms splash screen – Great work by Tom. which is an update of
- A Pretty Good Splash Screen in C# – CodeProject.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, Development, Software Development, Visual Studio 2002, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, WinForms | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/20
Somehow many software vendors seem to make it a sport to make it hard to get download URLs.
So here is a bunch of direct download URLs for the (almost new <g>) Visual Studio 2012 RC (formerly and internally known as Visual Studio 11).
There are both ISO files (big, but convenient for offline installation).
Web installers (depending on the choose install options, the total download can be a lot less than the complete ISO, but your system needs to be online during the full installation process).
You can find similar Windows 8 Release Preview download links here (they were distilled from the official download page, which now gives a 404 because of the atdmt link redirect is broken).
I use the x64 and x86 shortcuts for the x64 and x86 ISO links.
The Windows 8 Release Preview Upgrade Assistant also comes in handy.
The above links give a sustained transfer rate here of at least 3 megabit/second.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 5.0, Development, Power User, Software Development, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio and tools, Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/20
So I won’t forget:
I was trying to generate from the interop.scripting.dll which I guess was the automatically generated dll without strong naming. A wrapperof a wrapper apperently doesnt work.
The following did work:
tlbimp.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\scrrun.dll /keyfile:..\nameHere.snk /out:Interop.Scripting.StrongNamed.dll
The suite of .NET projects I’m refactoring relies in part on scripting in the Microsoft Script Runtime because the original was build by people bringing their COM love from the VB6 world into the .NET world.
I don’t see COM as the first class citizen it was in the VB6 era. On the other hand, COM and ActiveX play an important role in the .NET world. Sometimes I regret that, as dealing with COM is hard.
Some consider COM a first class citizen in .NET as it was in VB6, especially after the dynamic keyword was added in C# 4.0. The variant type available since Delphi 2 since 1996 does more or less the same as dynamic keyword in C#. I know how Anders Heijlsberg disliked the Delphi Variant support of COM. But COM is what the market wanted in 1996, and that seems true until today.
But I digress.
At least parts of the .NET code needs to become strongly named, so I’m hesitating:
- kick out the COM stuff – and verify through unit tests that the encompassing code still works – or
- generate a strongly named COM Interop Wrapper as described above.
Not sure yet.
Opinions anyone?
Anyway, I’m expecting a few problems here and there, so I’ll be using the CLR Interop Tools like the P/Invoke Interop Assistant and Type Library Importer in Managed Code where needed.
–jeroen
via: Strong name for Interop.Scripting – .NET Framework.
Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Software Development, VB.NET | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/19
Never knew it was so brilliantly easy to undelete files from TFS: you can do it in Visual Studio, by enabling “Show deleted items in the Source Control Explorer” in the settings.
Just look at TFS – Undelete File or Folder for the screen shots.
Not sure in which Visual Studio version this got introduced, but it works in VS 2010 and up.
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Software Development, Source Code Management, TFS (Team Foundation System), Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 