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’ Category

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MonoTouch 5.0 released: iOS 5 support for Mono on the iOS 5 release day

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/13

With the and iOS 5 release today and the MonoDevelop 2.8 release last week, there is also a new MonoTouch 5.0 released that binds the two and allows you to develop iOS 5 using Mono.

Almost like a mirracle: on the iOS 5 release day, MonoTouch 5 gets released. Lot’s of new stuff to play with, just read the announcement :)

Quote: “If you already have MonoTouch, simply launch MonoDevelop and you will be prompted to update – it’s that easy!”

Be sure to also read the new MonoTouch 5 documentation on new iOS  5 features and the comprehensive API diff between MonoTouch 4.2 and 5.0.

–jeroen

via: MonoTouch 5.0 – MonoTouch.

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Mobile Development, MonoTouch, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »

MonoDevelop 2.8 is Here! via: Xamarin blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/12

Last week, Xamarin released version 2.8 of the MonoDevelop development environment.

Biggest feature is xCode 4 support (which integrated the Interface Builder therefore broke MonoDevelop 2.6).

Since it is hard to run xCode 3 on Mac OS X Lion (Mac OS X Lion more than prefers xCode 4), and you need at least xCode 4.2 beta to develop for iOS 5, this welcome upgrade when you are staying current on Mac OS X.

You can use MonoDevelop to create .NET applications for:

  • iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod-touch)
  • Mac OS X
  • Android
  • Windows
  • ASP.NET

Be sure to read the MonoDevelop 2.8 release notes, as even the list of Major Highlights is long:

  • C# 4.0
  • Defaults to the 4.0 profile.
  • New Garbage Collection engine
  • New Frameworks:
    • Parallel Framework
    • System.XAML
  • Threadpool exception behavior has changed to match .NET 2.0
    • potentially a breaking change for a lot of Mono-only software
    • See information below in the “Runtime” section.
  • New Microsoft open sourced frameworks bundled:
    • System.Dynamic
    • Managed Extensibility Framework
    • ASP.NET MVC 2
    • System.Data.Services.Client (OData client framework)
  • Performance
    • Large performance improvements
    • LLVM support has graduated to stable
      • Use mono-llvm command to run your server loads with the LLVM backend
  • Preview of the Generational Garbage Collector
  • Version 2.0 of the embedding API
  • WCF Routing
  • .NET 4.0’s CodeContracts
  • Removed the 1.1 profile and various deprecated libraries.
  • OpenBSD support integrated
  • ASP.NET 4.0
  • Mono no longer depends on GLIB

–jeroen

via: MonoDevelop 2.8 is Here! « Xamarin.

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Mono for Android, MonoTouch, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 1 Comment »

Impersonation on the iSeries: Changing Profile User

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/12

When running on Windows, changing the current user is called impersionation.

There are various ways to do this in Windows, including

On the iSeries, there is only one way, as everything goes through the same API: use QSYGETPH (Get Profile Handle) to verify a username/password combination and obtain a handle to the authentication token, then use QWTSETP (Set Profile Handle) to change the user currently signed on, as for instance mentioned by Colin Williams directing to the CHGCURUSR tool on FreeRpgTools.com and an article on Swapping AS/400 User Profiles by Shannon O’Donnel that comes with source code.

On the iSeries, when you are done, you should use QSYRLSPH (Release Profile Handle) when done impersonating, and you need to get the handle from the original user profile if you want to return to it.

The IBM documentation contains a small sample with QSYGETPH, QWTSETP and QSYSRLSPH that sets and restores the profile handle (edit 20120214: it got moved to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=%2Fapis%2Fapiexushand.htm)

Note that on both Windows ans iSeries, impersonation within a process/thread will make it run in the new context, but the process still keeps the identity of the user that started the process.

If you want to change that, then on both you need to start a new process from the impersonated thread.

In Windows, you can combine the impersionation and the creation of a new process by using the CreateProcessWithLogonW function (as mentioned at the Old New Thing by Raymond Chan). I’ve yet to find an equivalent on the iSeries.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, iSeries, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions – Customer Feedback for Microsoft

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11

Having done quite a bit of Windows CE development work in .NET, I totally support the below UserVoice request: re-add support for Windows CE in Visual Studio 2010.

Please vote both the underlying Microsoft connect request, and the uservoice entryif you support it too!

Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions

Microsoft caused outrage when without warning or explanation they dropped support for the Smart Device Extensions. Meaning that there is no support for both managed (Compact Framework) and unmanaged (C++) development for the Windows CE platform.

Microsoft promised support would be added by the time VS2010 was released but then back tracked, to date the official line is use VS2008. This product is nearly 4 years old, it is becoming increasingly more impractical to use VS2008 solely for the purpose of developing for the Windows CE platform. Many development teams invested heavily in the benefit of having a single UI for both embedded and desktop development, with the advent of the Compact Framework skill sets and more importantly the code base could easily be shared across platforms. This is now no longer true, as the desktop development/source control/build/test environments have moved on the embedded development environment is stuck in the past. This means duplication of code, duplication of effort and increased cost.

Anyone wanting to start developing for Windows CE has to first buy an MSDN subscription because you can no longer buy VS2008 retail.

As support for Smart Devices has been inherent in VS since VS2003 many people have been caught out when upgrading to VS2010, in many cases those who make their living in the embedded world are now stuck with no upgrade path. Microsoft has refused to comment or discuss the future of embedded development, this silence has forced many to look at alternative platforms.

One of the top voted suggestions on the Connect site was to restore Smart Device Extension support in VS2010, Microsoft has ignored this in typical fashion.

See the Connect Item.

–jeroen

via Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions – Customer Feedback for Microsoft.

Posted in .NET, .NET CF, Development, Mobile Development, Software Development, Windows CE | 3 Comments »

Forcing decimal dot (.) for number parsing

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11

Small but useful, especially in countries that have something else than a dot (.) as decimal digit separator (all of the green countries: probably more than you’d thought).

The C# sourcecode is really simple use a NumberFormatInfo instance (or an instance of another class implementing IFormatProvider) in a Single.ToString call:

                float number = 3.1415;
                NumberFormatInfo numberFormatInfo = new NumberFormatInfo();
                numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";
                numberFormatInfo.NumberGroupSeparator = string.Empty;
                string numberString = number.ToString(numberFormatInfo);

The classes implementing IFormatProvider are CultureInfo, DateTimeFormatInfo and NumberFormatInfo.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Registry Search-Replace tools – correcting the havoc after a data migration

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/07

A while ago, I found myself in the situation where at a corporate client the user profiles had moved on the LAN. Very understandable: it was one of the migrations towards DFS. They notified this in advance, so I made backups of everything (home drive and user profile) just to make sure.

The move indeed caused all sorts of havoc, because the data was moved, but the registry was only slightly modified.

Some of the errors I got were like these:

[Internet Explorer - Search Provider Default]
A program on your computer has corrupted your default search provider setting for Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer has reset this setting to your original search provider, Live Search (search.live.com).

Internet Explorer will now open Search Settings, where you can change this setting or install more search providers.
[OK]

and

[Desktop]
\\old-server\old-share\user-id\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location.
[OK]

Below some of the ramblings on what I did to get everything working again, including registry searches when you are not allowed to run RegEdit, searching through text, and the places in the registry that had to change. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Power User, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »

C#/Windows: why LastWriteTime can be earlier than CreationTime

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/05

I was wondering about file times like these:

CreationTime....: 5-10-2011 10:00:13
LastAccessTime..: 5-10-2011 12:05:58
LastWriteTime...: 5-10-2011 10:00:10

I found the answer on stackoverflow.

If a file is copied to another file, the new file retains the LastWriteTime of the source but the CreationTime will be the time of the copy.

And indeed: the file had been copied from a local directory to a central network location.

–jeroen

via c# – Windows: How to determine if a file has been modified since a given date – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

CRC32 Calculators in Delphi and .NET

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/05

For a couple of projects, I needed to calculate CRC32 hashes (they same CRC that for instance is used in ZIP files).

A few of the projects used C#, others used Delphi, so here are a few references:

FileFormat.info has a good on-line hasher (that does CRC32, md5 and a bunch of others) accepting both strings, hex bytes and files.

–jeroen

via: CRC32 Calculator.

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

.NET based iOS development: MonoTouch 4.2.2 is out

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/30

While starting MonoDevelop this morning, I found out that MonoTouch 4.2.2 is out.

New Features in MonoTouch 4.2.2

This is a minor update to MonoTouch 4.2, with the following bug fixes:

Changes in MonoTouch 4.2.2

Bug fixes:

  • #587 – Full-AOT failure when *not* linking the application
  • #923 – UISegmentedControl: -[NSCFString BridgeSelector]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0xe084860
  • #931 – UITapGestureRecognizer fails with “unrecognized selector sent”
  • #942 – Wrong binding for CGPDFArray.GetDictionary()
  • #975 – CGPDFDictionary.GetString() returns invalid strings
  • #980 – Cannot use ABPeoplePickerNavigationController after update to 4.2

–jeroen

via: MonoTouch 4.2 – MonoTouch.

Posted in .NET, Development, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mobile Development, MonoTouch, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Just uploaded by BASTA.NET conference session materials on .NET Cross Platform Mobile Development on Windows 7, Android and iOS

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/09/27

This morning I gave a well attended session at the BASTA.NET conference on .NET Cross Platform Mobile Development on Windows 7, Android and iOS

If you were attending my session, or just interested in Cross Platform Development with a touch – pun intended – of .NET (and Mono, MonoTouch, MonoDroid, MonoMac, Xcode) then you can download the materials here: http://bo.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/changes/70132 and http://bo.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/changes/70133 (yes, 2 change sets: somehow with SVN  “Check for modifications” I still missed part of the batch).

It consists of the PDF with session slides and the demo apps based on an old (.NET 1.1 and .NET Compact Framework 1.0 era) C# tic tac toe demo (which was based on some Turbo Pascal sources from 20+ years ago), now revived for the Windows Phone 7 (with Visual Studio), iOS (with MonoTouch) and Android (with MonoDroid) platforms.

The conference is held at the beautifully designed Rheingoldhalle conference center adjacent to the Rhine (German: Rhein) river in Mainz, Germany.

Oh: and I enjoyed a bit of the great weather outside (while it lasts <g>).

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, BASTA!, C#, Conferences, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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