Scott Holden's Blog : .NET Compact Framework

Let our performance work for you!

ScottHolden — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:12:00 GMT

Ok, so we have released the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and you have heard about all of our performance enhancements.

You download .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and install it on your device. You then start your application and hope to see the new performance gains. However, there are no noticeable gains!?

I am assuming that you have .NET Compact Framework 1.0 still on the device. The .NET Compact Framework v2 is a side-by-side (SxS) install, and by default we have an “opt-in” policy for running applications targeted at v1 on v2, so you will need to go write a configuration file for your application…

Copy the following XML data

<configuration>

<startup>

<supportedRuntime version="v2.0.5238"/>

</startup>

</configuration>

Create a file called <appname>.exe.config containing the above XML
Save a copy of the file in the same locations as the exe on your device

Now your application will run on .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and take advantage of the new performance enhancements! Compatibility between versions of the .NET Compact Framework is a fundamental for our team, so your v1 applications should just run seamlessly on v2. If this is not the case, please use the Microsoft Product Feedback Center to report issues.

Note: Inclusion of the v1 runtime versions in the config file is a subtly important. The scenario where this matters is when you install and then uninstall v2. In this situation, you would still be left with the v2 of mscoree.dll which determines which version of the runtime to load. Since the semantics of the configuration file is exact binding, you need to specify all possible bindings that you support. In this case, mscoree.dll will try 2.0 RTM (5238) first, then 1.0 SP3 (4292), then 1.0 SP2 (3316), then 1.0 SP1 (3111) and finally 1.0 (2268) in respective order.

BR/ Scott

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

Keynote at MEDC

ScottHolden — Tue, 10 May 2005 21:32:00 GMT

I just got back from the keynote at MEDC with BillG. Seth was up on stage to present new features in Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Compact Framework 2.0 along with Neil Enns. Nice job guys.

.NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP3

ScottHolden — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:18:00 GMT

We have just released .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP3 and it is available for download. There are no new features in SP3; however, we fixed a few protocol compatibility issues as well a couple of integrity issues. See the link for more details.

Scott

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

Generics

ScottHolden — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:02:00 GMT

Have you been wondering if the .NET Compact Framework is going to support Generics in v2? Why yes, of course.

Check out Roman Batoukov’s post Generics in the .NET Compact Framework, where he gives insider information on the implementation of Generics.

Scott

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

.NET Compact Framework Version Compatibility

ScottHolden — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:48:00 GMT

Steven Pratschner just wrote two posts on versioning in the .NET Compact Framework. There are a couple of things to note for device developers. The first is that we do support the notion of side by side for v1 and v2, but the reality is there isn’t enough storage on many devices. And the second thing is that we have strived for great compatibility between v1 and v2. Applications built for v1 should just run on .NET Compact Framework v2.

Of course 100% backwards compatibility is very difficult; especially when you consider that different exceptions being thrown from a method or different ordering of events for Windows.Forms has a chance of causing an application to break.

To read about our efforts in detail, versioning architecture, how to promote a v1 application to run on v2, and how to force v1 behavior in a v2 application, please make sure that you check out Steven’s articles.

Application Compatibility with .Net Compact Framework Whidbey

.Net Compact Framework: Versioning, Strong Names and the Global Assembly Cache – Part 2

And finally I have a call to action. Although we do a lot of testing, including testing many of the shipping applications, we need your help to ensure that our backwards compatibility is super high. You know your applications the best and can properly verify correct operation. When .NET Compact Framework v2 Beta 2 is available, please run your v1 application (without recompile) against it and report any issues that you find through the MSDN Feedback Center, .NET Compact Framework newsgroup or this blog.

Scott

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

Instrumentation in the .NET Compact Framework

ScottHolden — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:09:00 GMT

So my boss, Mike Zintel, has showed me up. He started his blog and wrote this great article on memory management in the .NET Compact Framework and Windows CE. Don’t miss this one!

In any case, between reading the article and talking to Mike, I feel pretty guilty about the tools that we provide for our customers to tell how their app is performing. In v1 and even as we finish off v2, we really only have mscoree.stat to help out developers. See Developing Well Performing .NET Compact Framework Applications article if you would like more information on this. Mscoree.stat provides a simple static view of some counters in the .NET Compact Framework CLR at the end of the application run. Useful, but understandably not enough in many circumstances to find real issues.

First off, I want to enhance the counters in mscoree.stat. We have already added more information such as “Boxed Value Types” and the team is in the process of adding information about Windows.Forms, such as the number of controls, pens, etc.

The second thing is being able to take a live view of the mscoree.stat data – remote performance counters for the .NET Compact Framework. I have a prototype working today as you can see with the following picture. Basically this is just a runtime representation of the data from mscoree.stat over a network connection and displayed in a list view.

The application also publishes the data to PerfMon. The data that I am displaying in my sample instance below are the 5 memory heaps in the .NET Compact Framework and their current size while playing a game of Yahtzee. Throughout the game, you can see the GC Heap memory climbing since a GC does not occur. The large drop about two thirds of the way is from switching the application into the background. Here, we see that a full garbage collection occurs, including pitching JIT compiled code, significantly reducing the working set of the application while in the background. I then switched back to the application and resumed playing the game. This is only a simple sample of the data that can be gathered via remote performance counters.

We will get this stuff out in your hands as soon as possible – hopefully in the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 timeframe.

Scott

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