Sandcastle

Sandcastle June 2010 Release

2010-06-25T23:04:00Z

I am happy to announce that we have posted an updated version of Sandcastle to Codeplex. I know this was a very long wait for everyone.

This release brings Sandcastle to parity with the code that was used to generate the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 documentation. It contains over 100 bug fixes and changes that were made over the last 2 years and adds full support for building API documentation for .NET 4 projects.

We also contracted with ComponentOne to add support for producing the Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 (MSHC) output target. Sandcastle can now produce Xhtml files that can be cabbed up and consumed by the new Microsoft Help System, which was released with Visual Studio 2010.

For our next release, we plan on adding support for the output of topics with the MSDN Lightweight look and feel. For the VS 2010 docs that we shipped, this new styling was added in post-production by MSDN, which is why it isn't already part of the Sandcastle presentation layers.

Darren Parker
Microsoft

Sandcastle Version Supporting VS 2010, .NET 4 and Microsoft Help Viewer

2010-05-25T17:10:56Z

We released the source code for Sandcastle a year ago (http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/SourceControl/ListDownloadableCommits.aspx) supporting Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 documentation. After this release we were extremely busy in releasing the new Help Viewer for VS 2010 Beta2, CTP and RTM. In addition we launched "lightweight" view as default for MSDN library.

Thanks for all the community support, feedback and patience during the past 11 months.

Sandcastle Release:

I am currently working with my colleague, Darren Parker (pictured here!) to manage Sandcastle releases in codeplex. Moving forward Darren will manage Sandcastle releases to Codeplex and communication with the community through this blog. I will be assisting Darren with the blogs and releases.

Darren is currently working on a new release of Sandcastle with the following enhancements:

· Sandcastle will generate cabs (MSHC files) as output for integration with the new Microsoft Help Viewer that shipped with VS2010.

· Bug fixes and functionality updates to accurately document VS 2010 and .NET 4.

Sandcastle Longer term:

Per Darren’s post here, we are already working on a new content build system and have plans to also release this as Sandcastle vNext. Darren will provide more details about this in a later post.

Sandcastle Team at TechED 2010:

Darren, myself and David Wright (architect for Sandcastle) will be at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans (June 7 through10). If any of you are interested in meeting up with us that week, let me know. We won't have a booth, but would love to meet some of you for drinks, dinner etc. and at the same time talk about the current state and future of Sandcastle.

Cheers.

Anand..

Sandcastle Release

2009-07-02T16:29:00Z

Per my previous blog post http://blogs.msdn.com/sandcastle/archive/2009/01/15/sandcastle-update.aspx, I have released the source code for the latest version of Sandcastle at http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/SourceControl/ListDownloadableCommits.aspx. This release was used to ship Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 documentation (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd831853(VS.100).aspx)

I am in the process of generating the msi and will be providing additional details on the release shortly. Please expect another blog with details by early next week. Cheers.

Anand..

Announcing the release of Common Compiler Infrastructure (CCI) - Metadata

2009-04-15T08:51:00Z

I am very pleased to announce the availability of CCI. Herman Venter from Microsoft Research released CCI at http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/ . CCI is a set of components (libraries) that provide some of the functionality that compilers and related programming tools tend to have in common. The metadata components provide functionality for reading, writing and manipulating Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR) assemblies and debug files. The functionality provided by these components subsumes the functionality provided by System.Reflection and System.Reflection.Emit.

In Sandcastle we use CCI for assembly reflection. MRefBuilder (actually, CCI) searches the current directory for dependency assemblies, as well as any directories specified by the /dep option. CCI is also used by FxCop. CCI does not attempt to open a dependency assembly until some information from that assembly is needed. We use CCI because technically, CCI never “loads” any assembly; it just parses the data in the assembly file. That is why CCI can reflect over a foreign mscorlib while System.Reflection cannot.

For more information, visit the http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/website. There you will find detailed specifications, documentation, and myriad of other informaion. You can also get the latest release and source code at http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/.

Cheers.

Anand..

Announcing the release of Meta Numerics project at Codeplex

2009-04-08T02:55:00Z

I am very pleased to announce the availability of Meta Numerics project. My colleague and Sandcastle architect David Wright released Meta Numerics at http://metanumerics.codeplex.com/. The Meta.Numerics library brings scientific computing to the .NET platform. It offers an object-oriented API for matrix algebra, advanced functions of real and complex numbers, and statistics.

For more information, visit the http://www.meta-numerics.net website. There you will find detailed specifications, documentation, and myriad web calculators illustrating the capabilities of the Meta.Numerics library. You can get the latest release and source code at http://metanumerics.codeplex.com/.

Cheers.

Anand..

Seventeenth Annual WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance, March 29-April 1, Seattle, Washington

2009-03-29T07:23:00Z

I am very pleased to be a part of the Seventeenth Annual WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance. At this conference I am presenting a session on Sandcastle and my colleague April will be presenting Help3. I have provided screen shots on Help3 below. The next release of Sandcastle will support Help 3 attributes. I will publish my slides from this conference later this week.

You can join the Linkedin Group for this conference at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1276877&trk=hb_side_g. A number of the speakers have posted some info about themselves and their current activities.

Help 3:

Help 3 Viewer for Visual Studio 2010 is shaping up well. We did demos at PDC and at the MVP summit. I will blog details on Help 3 attributes shortly. Latest screen shots from Help3 vewer are posted below:

Let me know if you plan on being at this conference. I would love to meet with you. Cheers.

Anand..

MSDN: Launching low bandwidth (loband) Library Beta for long haul!

2009-03-26T10:32:00Z

Please see my post at http://blogs.msdn.com/innovation/archive/2009/03/26/launching-low-bandwidth-loband-beta-for-long-haul.aspx.

Anand..

MVP Global summit, Help 3, Sandcastle and updates

2009-03-12T08:25:00Z

I was very pleased to be a part of 2009 Global MVP summit this year. We hosted three help industry MVPs last week. Eight Help sessions over two days by various speakers were well received. We received great feedback during these sessions. Rob Chandler has posted few pictures from this summit here - http://www.helpmvp.com/Home/photos/2009-summit and is connecting us through a Help3 Facebook group here - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70197449895.

Help 3:

Help 3 Viewer for Visual Studio 2010 is shaping up well. We did demos at PDC and at the MVP summit. I will blog details on Help 3 attributes shortly.

Sandcastle:

I will release a version of Sandcastle supporting Help 3 attributes after we ship Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010.

Changes!

I have a new role within Microsoft and it's challening/exciting! I will be leading the program management efforts at MSDN/TechNETPublishing System (MTPS). In addition to Sandcastle efforts I will be driving innovation into MSDN/TechNET/Expression Library. I plan on starting weekly blogs about my new area at http://blogs.msdn.com/innovation/. Hope you all can join me at the Innovation blog.

Cheers.

Anand..

Part 2: Sandcastle Update

2009-01-19T22:54:00Z

Per my earlier blog, I posted the source code for Sandcastle at http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle/SourceControl/ListDownloadableCommits.aspx. This will enable you to browse the source code or access it using the methods described here .

The source code posted is the same version published previously in a ZIP format. With the latest release fixed the following issues reported in the Zip format:

· I did not provide a SLN file for the projects. You could create your own, but it would be more convenient to provide one in the source distribution.

· In the SLN file created from the previous source distribution, users encountered the following when trying to build this way:

o Each project has TFS source control information which is not valid for people outside my team. This will be stripped for the source distribution.

o Most projects specify a strong name key file which doesn't exist in the package. The project files should disable signing, or a dummy key.snk should be provided.

o The MoreComponents project doesn't build; has errors such as "'Microsoft.Ddue.Tools.BuildComponent' does not contain a constructor that takes '1' arguments". It seems that this is a non-essential project and maybe should not be included at all.

o The MrefBuilderStatic project doesn't build; has errors such as "The type or namespace name 'RootFilter' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)". I will remove this project.

o BuildAssemblerConsole references the CommandLine project at an incorrect path.

o The BuildAssembler and BuildAssemblerConsole projects appear to be duplicates and BuildAssemblerConsole doesn't build.

· After unloading the problematic projects, users able to get everything built. Unfortunately, there are 115 warnings in the build. These should really be fixed as a best practice.

· There are lots of Code Analysis (FxCop) warnings. We should set a good example by eliminating such warnings from the code we ship.

· There are many files that pertain to the NT build system and should be excluded from the source distribution (makefile, makefile.inc, placefile, etc.).

Hope this helps. Cheers.

Anand..

Sandcastle Update

2009-01-15T11:08:00Z

Thank you for using Sandcastle and providing with valuable feedback. It is always good to get emails from this community about Sandcastle. Today Microsoft MVP Michael Cummings, principal consultant @ http://www.magenic.com/, contacted me about a thread on the MVP newsgroups that rumors the Sandcastle project has been abandoned. I would like to provide an update on where we are with Sandcastle project. We are currently working on updating Sandcastle to ship content for VS 2010 Help3 viewer.

After posting Sandcastle source at http://www.codeplex.com/sandcastle my team worked on shipping MSDN Library for VS2008 SP1. We made lot of improvements to MSDN library setup time by componentizing the .NET Framework content. I will post a separate blog about this fun project. Here are some interesting stats from this project:

VS 2008 MSDN Library

· Topics: 838,708

· VS and Frameworks Only Topics: 215,695

· Install time 29 minutes – 19 minutes for HxMerge. (Note: this is the time it takes to do a full install of all MSDN library content, not just VS and Frameworks docs)

VS 2008 SP1 MSDN Library

· Topics: 872,199

· VS and Framework Only Topics: 336,050

· Install time 13 minutess – 5 minutes for HxMerge (Note: this is the time it takes to do a full install of all MSDN library content, not just VS and Frameworks docs).

The Overall setup time for VS 2008 SP1 improved by 55% over Vs 2008 and the HxMerge time improved by 74%. The machine used for the above testing was a Dell/Optiplex 2.4Ghz, 1GB RAM with 80GB HD.

Sandcastle update in the next 2 weeks:

Few months ago I published the source code for Sandcastle in a ZIP format at http://www.codeplex.com/sandcastle . By the end of this month, I plan on updating the source code in the TFS server of codeplex to fix the following: