Powertoys WebLog : Source Code Provided

VS Content Installer Power Toys

Powertoys — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:25:00 GMT

The first release of the VS Content Installer Power Toys are now available. You will need a recent build of VS (I tested with the August CTP, but the July version may also work) to use these tools. Remember, they are still a beta build, so not everything will work as expected. But here is what is available:

Content Builder - easily create VSI files with an easy to user wizard interface
Content Uninstaller - remove content installed through the Content Installer
Code Library Installer - install libraries for use within the Add Reference dialog box
Debugger Visualizer Installer - install debugger visualizers (both in DLL and CS form)
Help Installer - install help topics which are automatically included into the MSDN help browser
Samples Installer - install samples
Snippet Directory Installer - an extension of the the snippets installer, but gives you a bit more control in how the files are installed

The content installer also has 4 starter kits (2 for C#, 2 for VB) to help you create your own custom installers. There is also a starter kit (in C#) that will help create plugins into the content builder to automatically upload content to content hosting web sites. Unfortunately, there are no content hosting web sites that support automatic upload yet, but I am working on that - I am currently working on a starter kit to create web sites that host VSI content, just run the starter kit template and you have a full web site that supports uploading, downloading, content rating, etc. More information on this in the next few weeks.

This MSI will also place IntelliSense XML files for programming the Content Installer, unfortunately, because of a recent change in VS, this may not work as it should. But you should be able to move the xml file yourself to the correct location.

I plan on making the source code available to these tools soon.

You can download the msi to install the power toys at http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=6b1aceda-e613-4dac-beeb-0cd8ad8f2d41

If you use Regular Expressions, you need to check out this Regex Builder tool

Powertoys — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 21:29:00 GMT

One of my coworkers in Visual Studio has created this really cool tool for creating and testing Regular Expressions. I’ve just recently started using .NET Regular Expressions in my Editor testing, so take my word for it that this tool greatly helps with writing regular expressions.

Overview for the tool, as written on GotDotNet:
A tool for building and testing Regular Expressions. It allows you to manipulate the expression and your source text, and shows you a tree with all of the Matches, Groups, and Captures found in the text.

The tool can be found at
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=9e33c395-8275-4906-8a09-0bff41fdc1d6

Thanks,
-sara

Go Back Visual Studio Add-in

Powertoys — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:20:00 GMT

http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/GoBackAddin.asp

[Via .Avery Blog]

The Go Back Add-in provides a Navigate Backward functionality that is different than the normal Navigate Backward functionality. (Which does some neat things like close a file if you happened to have opened it while navigating forward) The author of the tool is pretty passionate about what he wants and built the exact functionality he was looking for, if you agree with what he likes then you should love it.

(via The Daily Grind)

-James

This is a pretty cool extension to the Navigate backwards command in VS. Oh, if you like that command in general then you might also want to check out the VSMouseBindings powertoy that will let you bind the navigate back/forward commands to your extra mouse keys. Josh

VBCommenter 1.2.5 FINAL Released for Adding XML Comments to VB.Net

Powertoys — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:08:00 GMT

I continue to be impressed by the people from the community that step up and make serious improvements to the VBCommenter tool. The new release, from Doug, is very impressive. Here are just some of the improvements he highlighted on his blog.

Major speed improvements (mostly related to schema and XML validation handling). For example, a large project that took 14 minutes to build using 1.2 and 2 minutes without VBCommenter takes about 2.5 minutes with 1.2.5.
Improved comment schema (includes all NDoc extensions to the XML comment schema)
Improved XML validation and task list reporting
cref resolution is much better - If your class has a method called "Log" and you want to reference it, the generated cref will be correct instead of pointing to System.Diagnostics.Log
Reads assemblies in read-only mode to avoid locking the file or the inability to load the assembly if the IDE has it locked
Renders variables declared as "WithEvents" as properties (which is how the WithEvents keyword is implemented in IL) to allow NDoc to find the appropriate comments for the field (See More)

Josh

Read Blogs Without Leaving Visual Studio

Powertoys — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:35:00 GMT

Jon, the creator of SharpTools, sent me mail to let me know about his latest creation... a plugin that lets you read blogs indide the Visual Studio IDE. I've gave it a shot and I have to say that it looks pretty cool.

From the site.

This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start blogging from within the development environment! Features include:

Support for folders or individual feeds
Drag-and-drop support for feeds and folders
Preview a new feed as you add it
Easy control of all feed properties
Automatic and on-demand refresh of feeds
Automatic feed search based on a site URL
Keyword searching for published feedsusing Synic8
Keyword search within all subscribed feeds
Import of feed subscriptions from an OPML file

C# Programmable Calculator

Powertoys — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:05:00 GMT

This one comes from Eric through the mailbag:

http://www.personalmicrocosms.com/html/cspcalc.html

"If you like Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculators and you like to program in C#, use C# Programmable Calculator to create custom functions using your favorite programming language. C# Programmable Calculator includes pre-programmed functions in the following categories: math, trigonometry, computer math, finance, and date and time manipulation.

Additionally you can write your own functions in C# using the integrated source code editor. C# Programmable Calculator is distributed as open source."

XML Visualizer for Visual Studio .NET 2003

Powertoys — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:53:00 GMT

Michael Bouck sent me mail about a cool "holiday project" add-in he was working on to create a visualizer for XML that you can use in VS2003. It is worth checking out and leaving some feedback for him on the workspace.

Home Page: http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/xmlviz.

Description Via Project Home

XML Visualizer for Visual Studio .NET 2003 (XMLVIZ) allows you to visualize most XML and XML-backed data sources during runtime a la Whidbey's "debugger visualizers". The difference is you don't have to wait for VS.NET 2005 because XMLVIZ will work with your copy of VS.NET 2003 today!

XMLVIZ is implemented as a VS.NET add-in and, once installed, is activated by highlighting any supported, initialized type instance during a debugging session, right-clicking on the selection to bring-up the context menu, and selecting the "XML Visualizer" menu item. The add-in will then grab the XML out of the selected target instance and display it on a modal dialog along with the schema (if available). For ADO.NET types, the data is also bound to a grid to allow navigation, row-filtering, and row version inspection.

Currently supported types (including derived) are: DataSet, DataTable, DataRow/DataRow[]/DataRowCollection (attached), DataView, DataRowView/DataRowView[] (attached), DataViewManager, XPathNavigator, types implementing IXPathNavigable, well-formed XML in strings, or any XML-serializable type.

Josh

VBCommenter for XML Comment Generation in VS .Net 2003

Powertoys — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:44:00 GMT

A personal entry for me. Today I reached the end of my intended roadmap and released version 1.2 of the VBCommenter addin. The VBCommenter is an addin for VS 2003 that gives you the ability to automatically generate XML comment headers in the VB .NET editor similar to what the C# editor automatically generates. It will also generate the XML comment file to go along with your VB assemblies at build time. You won't need this tool in VS 2005, but for VS 2003 users...

Buzz

Patrick Coelho Gives VBCommenter customization tips.
David Truxall: "It seems to be very usefull..." BTW - David, you can turn off the build generation of comments if you are concerned about the build performance.
John Mueller on using the VBCommenter with NDoc. "At this point, it might be easy to say that VBCommenter is a perfect tool with everything you need to combine class or application comments with your documentation efforts. "
Code Horror: "I've started to aggressively adopt the VBCommenter add-in, which adds XML comment support to the current version of VS.NET. "

When searching today I found a ton more articles and stories about the VBCommenter than I had ever seen. I'm really excited to have played a role in releasing something a lot of people have found useful!

Josh

Links

VBCommenter Workspace
Release Downloads

Zanebug: Unit Testing With Cool Perf Analysis

Powertoys — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:33:00 GMT

Via Adapdev.com:

Zanebug is an advanced unit testing application for .NET. It supports existing NUnit tests, performance metrics, multiple test iterations, in-depth error information, pass / fail stats, perfmon integration, result graphing, etc.

Web Site: http://www.adapdev.org/zanebug

Screenshots: http://www.adapdev.com/zanebug/index.aspx#screenshots

VS Addin for Managing Version Information

Powertoys — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 21:59:00 GMT

Via Matt Hawley:

"I was reading this weeks Code Project newsletter, when I came across an updated article named Versioning Controlled Build. The description so eloquently puts it: "A Visual Studio add-in that automates AssemblyVersion control."

One word, AWESOME! I downloaded the installer from the article, installed it, and launched VS.NET. Talk about an easy way of updating your version numbers for X number of projects. I know this is a daunting task for any developer that has more than 1 project that the version number needs to get updated.

Truly a great Add-In that will come handy for everyone!"

Direct Link: http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/VersioningControlledBuild.asp

Enjoy! Josh

Make Code Comments Pretty with CommentReflower

Powertoys — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 21:31:00 GMT

Ian wrote a cool VS 2003 plugin that makes comments in code more readable. From the Site:

"Comment Reflower is a Visual Studio .NET 2003 Plugin to reflow the text in comments in source files to have even word wrapping. It does more than simply just wrapping all text in comment blocks. It attempts to recognise and wrap appropriately:

bullet points and doxygen tags
lines that should never be reflowed
XML preformat (<pre>) blocks
HTML break (<BR>) commands

The results are best seen by example. ExampleFile.cpp is a sample file before Comment Reflower has been applied, ExampleFileAfter.cpp is the much neater and more readable result. "

Edit: Direct Link: http://commentreflower.sourceforge.net/

NUnit & VS Integration Macro (Via Rido)

Powertoys — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 22:18:00 GMT

Rido sent me mail about this macro this morning.

"I've written a macro that sets the project configuration options to a NUnit Test project, so you can debug without "Attach to a process". I think you could add it to your Macro list: "

Check it out: http://blogs.msdn.com/rido/archive/2004/09/10/NUnitVSMacro.aspx

CopySourceAsHTML: Get Code into HTML without Word from the Editor

Powertoys — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 21:37:00 GMT

Earlier this month I let you know about a macro that converts code to HTML for use on web pages or blog posts. Since then Colin sent me a link to his "Wordless" tool for accomplishing the same thing. The users reviews for Colin's tool are pretty positive.

" This tool rocks! " - Jake

"wow, yet another amazing addition to the already great IDE environment." - Steve

"This is freakin' awesome!" - Hacked

"One of the cooler VS.NET addins that I've come across" - Ryan

Good Times! Check it out yourself.

http://www.jtleigh.com/people/colin/blog/archives/2004/10/visual_studio_a.html

Simple Macro for Formatting Code to HTML from within VS 2003

Powertoys — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 23:43:00 GMT

Via .Avery: "Code -> HTML in VS.NET - Cory comes up with a cool macro to send your code to word then back to your clipboard. Quick HTML formatting for your code."

It's been a while since we've posted an interesting Macro to the Powertoys blog. This one is useful for those of you looking to put code into your blog posts. For more information on using macro code in VS.Net check out this article.

Check it out: http://addressof.com/blog/archive/2004/10/06/966.aspx

Good Times! Josh

Write and Execute C# Files from the Command Line with C# Script Executor

Powertoys — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 21:19:00 GMT

I'll admit... I've never been a scripting junkie. I've only dabbled in perl. Even if it takes me twenty more lines of code I will struggle to put out a C# version of what I'm after. If you are like me, then this tool will probably sound good to you.

From the home page: http://lyon-smith.org/downloads.aspx

C# Script Executor

This utility lets you run your C# source files straight from the command prompt, without having to compile them! Missing the VS.NET environment? No problem. This tool lets you temporarily construct VS.NET scaffolding around your file to create and debug it, demolish it when you're done, and rebuild it again later when you want to make further changes. Try it. You'll like it! See the help file for improvements in this release.

I also heard you can slice through cans with it as well. :-) Josh