.NET Compact Framework Team

HTTPS related hotfix

Manish has posted regarding a hotfix for the HTTPS related issue discussed in a previous post. The hotfix was recently given out to WM based devices on NETCF 3.5. Check out his post!

Back to the NETCF blog

We would like to revive the NETCF team blog and post here instead of the mobile developer blog as we noted earlier. Welcome back to the team blog.

- NETCF team.

NETCF 3.5 namespace poster updated

Check out Manish’s blog regarding this.

New Mobile Developer Blog!

We, the NetCF team, have decided to combine our blog with the other teams doing mobile development work in our organization, namely the Visual Studio for Devices team and the Silverlight Mobile team.

From now on, all .Net Compact Framework material will be posted on the Mobile Developer blog.  We'll continue to keep this site up so you can still find all the previous material we've posted.

Enjoy the new site!

Thanks,

The NetCF team.

Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 have been released

The Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 have just gone live at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C8174C14-A27D-4148-BF01-86C2E0953EAB&displaylang=en. If you downloaded a previous version, you might want to upgrade as there have been several bug fixes and improvements made to several of the tools.

What’s New

Many here are likely familiar with Remote Performance Monitor which shipped as a part of .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP1 and the Heap Viewer extension that shipped 2.0 SP2. This time we’ve added the CLR Profiler based on the desktop tool, NetCF SVCUtil for making it easy to consume WCF services on device, and the App Config tool for creating config files on the fly. We’ve improved our remote tools platform to make it significantly easier to use: client side tools components now deploy automatically so tools “just work”, everything works with emulators and a common device manager UI is provided to keep tabs on all your remote devices.

Comprehensive documentation for the tools is now also provided out of the box in the form of a chm file.

The Tools

NETCF CLR Profiler – CLR Profiler is an instrumenting allocation profiler for NETCF applications. It provides detailed allocation visualizations, allocation callstacks and other views of the managed heap for diagnosing various memory management issues.

NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Tool – The .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool (netcfsvcutil.exe) allows you to generate a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client proxy to help developers consume WCF services on device. Like svcutil.exe, which is the desktop version of the utility, netcfsvcutil.exe is a command-line tool that generates service model code from metadata documents and generates metadata documents from service model code.

App Configuration Tool - On-device tool for specifying what version of NETCF an application will run against (ie. Create config file), displaying installed versions of NETCF and displaying info about DLLs in the GAC.

Remote Logging Configuration Tool– The Logging Configuration Tool enables users to easily configure logging options on a NETCF device including: loader, interop, network, error and finalizer logs. (used to be a part of RPM)

Remote Performance Monitor and GC Heap Viewer – Provides real time counter data (ranging from Garbage Collector activity to type loading info) on a running NETCF application. The GC Heap Viewer feature allows you to capture the managed heap at any moment your app is running to view live references, and allows you to compare multiple snapshots to find memory leaks.

NETCF Network Log Viewer – A utility for viewing NETCF network log data.

Other Notes

Steven Pratschner has a few links to some overview on the tools here: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevenpr/archive/2007/12/10/powertoys-for-the-net-compact-framework-version-3-5-now-released.aspx.

Enjoy!

Why .NET Compact Framework fails to call some HTTPS web servers

On his blog, Andrew discusses an HTTPS bug in NetCF that causes NetCF to throw a WebException when connecting to some servers, and its possible workarounds.

David writes about the Lunch Launcher and Store and Forward Messaging

Over the past couple of months, I have been serializing my experiences in writing the Lunch Launcher demo (as seen at MEDC 2007) using the new Store and Forward Messaging feature of .NET Compact Framework version 3.5.  The series is now complete and the full table of contents is listed here.

The Journey of the Lunch Launcher
Part 1 - The origins of the 'lunch launcher'
Part 2 - MEDC 2007
Part 3 - Managing the Transport
Part 4 - Sending messages
Part 4b - The output channel
Part 5 - Receiving messages
Part 6 - Processing messages
Part 7 - The Lunch Manager
Part 8 - What did I learn?

Enjoy!

Disclaimer(s):
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
The information contained within this post is in relation to beta software.  Any and all details are subject to change.

Post on Remote Logging WCF on .NET Compact Framework

Hey everyone,

I've posted a quick overview of how to use the .NETCF Remote Logging tool to help debug WCF applications on the .NET Compact Framework. You can find it here.

 -Dan

.NET Compact Framework Application and Libraries List Updated

I've updated the .NET Compact Framework catalog with the some new applications and libraries, and some minor edits to existing entries. 

Click on this link to see our application catalog.

The catalog contains applications that I find out about through web searches and emails from developers.  We're always looking for applications and libraries to add to our catalog.  Applications and libraries we discover are used for

• posting updates to our team blog (you are here!) to show what types of applications are being built with .NET Compact Framework.  This page gets thousands of visits monthly, so having your app listed here can be an effective supplemental means of publicizing your application and company.
• candidates for basic compatibility testing with new versions of the .NET Compact Framework under development.  This helps us do our best to ensure that existing applications – like yours – continue to work well with new versions of the .NET Compact Framework. 

If your application isn't on the list - I'd love to add it.  Send an email to cfapp@microsoft.com (include name of application, which platforms it targets, required version of NETCF and URL).  If you need product support, please use the MSDN Feedback Center as this will ensure your issue gets into our databases where we can respond to it and track it.

Michael Lipp

Senior SDET

.Net Compact Framework

Disclaimers: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 CTP Released

The Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 CTP (September 2007) has just been released as an MSDN download.

This was originally slated to be released with the Core .NET Compact Framework, but was spun off as a side download.

Included in this release:

Remote Performance Monitor and GC Heap Viewer – Provides real time counter data (ranging from Garbage Collector activity to type loading info) on a running NETCF application. The GC Heap Viewer feature allows you to capture the managed heap at any moment your app is running to view live references, and allows you to compare multiple snapshots to find memory leak issues.

NETCF CLR Profiler – CLR Profiler is an instrumenting allocation profiler for NETCF applications. It provides detailed allocation visualizations, allocation callstacks visualizations and useful for diagnosing memory management issues.

App Configuration Tool (NetCFcfg.exe) - On-device tool for specifying what version of the NETCF runtime an application will run against, displaying installed versions of NETCF and displaying info about DLLs in the GAC.

NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Tool – The .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool (netcfsvcutil.exe) allows you to generate a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client proxy to help developers consume WCF services on device. Like svcutil.exe, which is the desktop version of the utility, netcfsvcutil.exe is a command-line tool that generates service model code from metadata documents and generates metadata documents from service model code.

Remote Logging Configuration Tool – The Logging Configuration Tool enables users to easily configure logging options on a NETCF device including: loader, interop, network, error and finalizer logs.

NETCF Network Log Viewer – A utility for viewing NETCF network log data.

Reflections on having multiple versions of NetCF on your device

Andrew Arnott discusses which versions of the .NET Compact Framework can be side-by-side installed, and which version will run your NetCF app on his blog.

The WCF subset supported by NetCF

Andrew Arnott details the features of WCF that are and are not supported by NetCF on his blog.

How to (not) write an especially precarious app on .NET (Compact Framework)

On his blog, Andrew Arnott discusses how to avoid depending on the internal details of NetCF (or the desktop .NET Framework).

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 Released

Microsoft .NET Compact Framework version 2.0 SP2 release is completed and is in the process of being released.  This service pack was driven customer feedback including improvements in stability, adds new heap tracking feature to the Remote Performance Monitor.

The .NET Compact Framework will be delivered to customers through various channels in the next few months.  Each channel and location will be reported on here.

Release Channels

(The links below will be updated as each release goes live)

Release Location

Web Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=aea55f2f-07b5-4a8c-8a44-b4e1b196d5c0&displaylang=en

WCE 4.2 QFE

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C49236E8-EB1F-446D-809A-A469022C2F08&displaylang=en

WCE 5.0 QFE

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=31B27925-0CF7-47F5-ACE2-DA478BF4F0BC&displaylang=en

WCE 6.0 QFE

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=021F5CFD-95FE-4BCF-AED2-15C0296370DA&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2005 Patch

New Features:
Service Pack 2 of the .Net Compact Framework V2.0 includes new features in the Remote Performance Monitor aimed at finding memory leaks in the managed heap. These features allow you to take snapshots of the GC heap at any point in time and view the relationships between the live object instances in the heap. You can also compare multiple snapshots over time in order to spot allocation trends in your application as it executes.

Fixed Bugs:

• NETCFRPM fails on x64
• Setup install/uninstall fails silently when the MSI is launched from Control Panel-Programs and Features on Vista
• Finalizers fail on RTF objects because COM bindings are already disposed
• VS crashes on trying to attach without setting the Attach Enabled Registry Key
• Thread.Join() fails with ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE on CE 6.0 platform
• Potential memory corruption caused by circular reference
• JIT assertion failure when non-existent COM port is addressed
• TypeLoadException using generics with NETCF 2.0
• IrDA is broken on Windows CE 5.0 devices
• NetCFRPM and MDBG cannot target headless devices
• SerialPort: Data corruption occurs if DataReceived event is used to receive Unicode characters sent across serial ports
• SerialPort: Cannot open a COM port beyond COM9
• SerialPort: GetPortNames() does not return serial port names beyond COM9
• NETCF deadlocks on exit if native callback delegate has been called on native thread
• VS 2005 RTM attempts to deploy NETCFv2.wce5.ARMV4I.cab/System_SR_ENU.cab instead of NETCFv2.wm.ARMV4I.cab/System_SR_ENU_wm.cab on Windows Mobile 6 platforms
• XmlSerializerializationWriter: When GetSpecifiedMember returns false serialization is halted resulting in loss of data
• Access violation marshaling a class with a string field
• Stepping out from a Breakpoint after Func eval causes breakpoint to remain at same place and then VS 2005 hangs
• COM: Access violation in N->M byref marshaling
• Native exception in marshalling code when using Interlocked.Exchange
• Access violation in StubPolicyAlloc (eestub\policy.cpp
• SerialPort.Open thows IOException on CE 6.0 devices
• Type.GetDefaultMembers() doesn't return base type's default members
• Installing multiple locales of same MSI results in multiple instances of NetCF showing up in Add Remove Programs
• VS 2005 attempts to deploy System_SR_ENU.cab instead of System_SR_ENU_wm.cab on Windows Mobile 6 platforms
• Debugger does not correctly handle new native threads entering through COM
• NETCFRPM parses connection string improperly when device uses ipv6
• V2 SP2: HttpWebRequest: HTTPS request fails when TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA cipher is used
• Debugger may AV if breakpoints active before F5
• WebBrowser's NavigatingEventArgs does not allow to cancel navigation
• XmlSerializer fails to deserialize enum's with spaces

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Application Compatibility Forecast for NETCF v2 sp2

Application Compatibility Issue

The issue only affected one application and occurs when the application tries to save a new template file and displays a warning about overwriting a file that doesn’t exist. The user can answer “yes, overwrite” to this warning and this will cause the template file to be saved correctly. We’re waiting to hear back from the ISV regarding this issue.

Breaking Change

We also found a breaking change through our regular, feature testing. This change was made to match the serialization behavior found on the full .Net Framework. The details of this breaking change are listed below:

XmlSerializer serializes object members in order more closely resembling declaration order where no order is explicitly defined.

Previous Behavior: XmlSerializer would scramble the order of XmlElements in a serialized object unless the Order property was set on XmlElementAttribute and similar attributes.

New Behavior: XmlSerializer now takes care to preserve the order that members are reflected from serialized objects where no Order property is explicitly set.  Note that where element ordering is important, explicitly setting the Order property is still recommended on both NetCF and .NET Framework to guarantee proper serialization order across platforms and versions.

Application Compatibility Test Details

Notes about the 90 applications we tested

• 30 sdk samples (NETCF & Windows Mobile SDK’s), 60 retail applications
• 54 were built with NETCF v1, 36 were built with NETCF v2

Applications were tested on a matrix of devices which included

• PocketPC or Smartphone
• Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6
• High/low resolution screens
• NETCF installed in RAM or ROM

.Net Compact Framework Application Catalog

In January I posted an update to the list of applications we’ve found that use Netcf.  I’ve recently updated this list in response to feedback I received from developers who wanted their application listed other adjustments.

If your application isn't on the list and you would like it to be, send an email to cfapp@microsoft.com and I'll get it posted with the next update.  If you need product support or want to request a feature, please use the MSDN Feedback Center as this will ensure your issue gets into our databases where we can respond to it and track it.

Michael Lipp

SDET Technical Lead

.Net Compact Framework

Disclaimers: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.