Does roslyn or visual studio 2015 provide API to rewrite IL or "something like that"? Let me explain...
I've read in msdn magazine's article Use Roslyn to Write a Live Code Analyzer, that it is possible to write custom code analyzers distributed via nuget packages, without need for visual studio plugins.
I'm really curious, if roslyn compiler and visual studio 2015 will allow to implement e.g. Code Cotracts such way, that no plugin is required to build it correctly.
Also, I would like to gain productivity and readability of my code with aspects like [NotifyPropertyChanged] data annotation on properties, but again, if it won't build correctly on every machine with visual studio 2015, it's not a good idea.
It is possible to use DispatchProxy from System.Reflection.DispatchProxy package. Unfortunately I haven't found any examples how to use it, but it looks like a replacement for RealProxy class with some differences (examples how to use RealProxy: hear and here).
Related
I've a bit of confusion about roslyn.
What I have done:
I've installed vs 2015 community edition and download in extensibilty > download compiler platform sdk.
So I created a simple console application: hello world example.
Well now I'm expect to choise the c# compiler between the vs2015 default one and roslyn..., but I've not found such option.
So my first question is: how to select version of c# compiler?
Second I've downloaded master-roslyn and I build, then I found csc.exe, well the odd things is that if I lauch the exe
I get c# compiler version 42.42.42.42. ???? Right?
Then I've follow some tutorials, but all purpose me:
to load a source from text file or string vars and analyze or change syntax tree, then compile to var.
Well at this point I'm confused... So:
What is roslyn exactly? A meta compiler? This mean that I can change my code at runtime just like Reflection?
Second: how can compile with vs2015 with default csc or choose roslyn?
third: If I build a custom version of roslyn How can I compile my source using Vs2015 ?
Which know if csc.exe is roslyn? No help or command line print the codename.
Thanks
So it looks like you've got a few questions:
What is Roslyn?
Roslyn is the new default compiler inside of Visual Studio 2015. If you're building and running applications within Visual Studio 2015, they're being compiled with the Roslyn compiler. You'll get to take advantage of all the new C# 6 features that are available only within the new compiler.
If you're using VS2015, Roslyn has replaced the old compiler entirely and as far as I know you can't use the old compiler within VS 2015.
Roslyn is also a platform that allows you to build programs that can modify, interpret and understand other programs. It's not really meant to let you write code that modifies itself (although that's probably possible to a degree).
The common use cases for Roslyn are:
Building Code Analyzers that provide errors and warnings within Visual Studio.
Building extensions for Visual Studio that understand source code.
Building other tools that understand or run source code. Example: ScriptCS - Scripting with C# code.
In order to use Roslyn for these purposes, you pull down the Microsoft.CodeAnalysis packages from NuGet. You can use these packages to parse code, analyze syntax trees, analyze symbols or compile code and emit IL.
If you're interested in learning more about Roslyn, I've started a series called Learn Roslyn Now that you might be interested in.
Can I replace the compiler?
Yes you can, but I'm not convinced this is a great idea outside of testing changes you want to contribute back to Roslyn. You can pull down Roslyn from GitHub and follow these instructions to build and run Roslyn from within Visual Studio.
If you follow those instructions, you'll be able to run the Roslyn project with F5. It will start a new instance of Visual Studio that's using your customized compiler. This is how people outside of Microsoft will contribute features to the compiler from now on. (Previously you couldn't deploy your custom compiler to Visual Studio but they fixed that in Visual Studio Update 1).
Roslyn is two things:
An API that lets you see "compiler things" like syntax trees and symbols.
A new csc.exe that is implemented atop #1.
If you want to make changes to the compiler and use that to build, take a look at these instructions if you haven't already. There's a few different ways you can make your own version of csc.exe and then use that to build something. But there's no "choice" dialog like you're looking for.
Roslyn is the default compiler of Visual Studio 2015. So, if you install VS2015 you´re already using Roslyn.
Roslyn is a codename for .NET Compiler Platform, and it provides open-source C# and Visual Basic compilers. The project is available on github.
Does anyone know how to Change VB project code to C# using Visual Studio 2010?
Any help appreciated
I don't believe Visual Studio itself provides any capabilities around this, but there are various other options. There are specific converters such as the ones from Tangible. Alternatively, you could build the VB code and then decompile to C# in something like Reflector or dotPeek. (Latest versions of Reflector are not free, but there is still a version 6 release which will not have a time bomb.)
Note that a verbatim translation of the code is likely to end up calling various methods in the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly - you'll want to do a bit more work to turn it into idiomatic C#.
Directly in Visual Studio you can't do this. However, you can use tools such as this one or this one.
Telerik has a free converter here
I've inherited a rather complex AsP.Net 3.5 web application derived from
Several DLLs. I've used .Net Reflector to examine the DLL contents. However, I am looking for a code analysis tool that might help identify key class files, show how the application makes database calls (it's not obvious from the codebase), and generally suggests ways to improve the codebase.
Does such a (free?) tool exist?
Take a look at NDepend (no, it's not free). It might not do everything you want, but it's a great code analysis tool.
I like AQTime from http://www.automatedqa.com/ for this. There's a free trial. The architecture tools in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate also allow you to generate graphs from assemblies.
Edit: You can also right-click on any method in VS 2010 and select Generate Sequence Diagram ... which is very helpful sometimes.
how come you use reflector to examine the DLL's rather than visual studio?
There's a reflector plugin to decompile the DLL's back to projects: FileDisassembler
Stepping thru the code in the VS debugger is the best code analysis tool, otherwise possibly even Rd-Gate Perf Profiler to record call stacks over time.
+1 for the architecture tools in Visual Studio 2010
I'm beginning to work on a COBOL/BASIC IDE at work (to replace the one that we have currently that's a slight step up from Notepad). It'll be made in C#. The management is really interested in implementing some Visual Studio type features, and a big one is code folding. I've looked on MSDN, but I didn't see any good way to collapse lines (or to add the expand/collapse buttons).
I'm assuming that the text area should be a RichTextBox. Am I off track here? I suppose it could be done with some sort of modified TreeView, but that seems a little wrong to me. Is there some way of doing this that I'm just missing?
Why not use an existing IDE and extend it? Writing one from scratch is a huge undertaking (you need a parser, lexer, syntax highlighter and more), and is even more complicated if you need to support multiple languages (you mention COBOL and Basic).
Notepad++ has syntax coloring and one can add languages to it - COBOL is one of the ones installed by default. It supports code folding and has many plugins (you can write your own, that will suit your needs).
Edit:
Eclipse is another excellent IDE that has similar support, and as mentioned in the comments has a COBOL plug-in.
I suggest you take a look at SharpDevelop. It's a pretty good IDE with a bunch of Visual Studio like features already built in. It's written in C# and fully supports code folding with syntax highlighting in several languages. Plus, it's Open Source under the LGPL license. So, if you don't want to base your app on SharpDevelop then you can still reuse some of their controls like the code editor or windowing toolkit.
You should consider adding the COBOL language to SharpDevelop instead of starting from scratch. If you can't do this, then you can still use the SharpDevelop code as a decent reference on how to make a good IDE work.
Sometimes embedding Eclipse or a full-fledged editor is not appropriate. It's overkill or overweight or wrong for some other reason. I appreciate the first inclination suggested in other posts to not re-invent here, but in some cases a small invention is what is necessary. For example, the textbox used to make Stack Overflow posts .... is neither Eclipse nor an embedded Visual Studio. I wonder why?
It's important to ask the question - build it or buy it? - but sometimes, the correct answer is BUILD IT.
XPathVisualizer provides a simple example of a code-folding text editor implemented in C#, and based on a RichTextBox. It's not VB, though - it's an XML editor. But the general principles apply.
Here's a look at it.
To implement XML syntax colorization dynamically, while the user types, it uses a separate background thread. The reasons why and some of the details are described in a separate answer on Stack Overflow.
You could do something similar for your COBOL/VB thing. XPathVisualizer is open source, licensed with MS-PL, so you can browse and borrow.
If your team is used to "Visual Studio features," then I'll assume you use Visual Studio there at the office. Here are my suggestions:
Base your IDE on Visual Studio, for the following reasons:
Use Visual Studio 2010 if possible. The SDK is greatly improved from 2008/earlier.
Use Visual Studio 2008/2005 otherwise. At the moment, all of my commercial IDE products only support 2005/2008.
If your team uses Visual Studio, they will hate Eclipse. Not even an option to consider in this case unless you choose to use an existing Eclipse plug-in, saving you the time of creating a new IDE.
If your team isn't using Visual Studio 2010, you can use the Visual Studio 2010 Shell in Integrated Mode for free (Isolated Mode is not what you want). This lets you use Visual Studio 2010 for your IDE for now, and should the team upgrade later to one of the full versions of Visual Studio 2010, the IDE for your language will cleanly integrate into the full version. Edit: Visual Studio Shell is basically the core of Visual Studio without any specific languages (C#, C++, VB, etc.) included. Microsoft provides this core for free, and it's a great option specifically for people interested in creating their own language support.
Read my answers in the following two questions:
Here's a longer post on my reasons for using 2010 over 2008: How do I implement intellisense support for a custom DLR language in VS2008?
Here's a very long answer on implementing various features (most of which are based on the 2005/2008 SDK): How do i implement intellisense for my language in visual studio?
Writing a complete IDE is a HUGE task. I would recommend trying to find an existing one that has what you want, or make adaptions to an existing open source IDE.
To answer your question: I guess that the Visual Studio IDE uses a custom control, written from scratch, rather than a RichText control.
In Visual Studio 2005 and prior you could export your code to Visio and view the relationships between the objects and what methods, properties and fields it had. This was great as it allowed you to tweak the appearance to improve the look.
In VS 2008 that option is gone, replaced (supposedly) with the class diagram system. It is functional but not pretty.
What I am looking for is some software that allows me to visualise in a prettier way or at least provide me with enough options to filter, arrange and so on so that I could touch it up in something else.
Do you require the software to be free? If not, you might consider a UML tool like Sparx Enterprise Architect. It can import your code, and has two add-ons that go further in terms of Visual Studio integration.
Not quite what you're asking for but it's worth checking out some of the add-ins for .Net Reflector
E.g.
Graph
Dependency Structure Matrix PlugIn for .NET Reflector
100% Reflective Class Diagram Creation Tool
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate supports UML class, sequence, component, use case, and activity diagrams. It also supports creating sequence, dependency graphs, and layer diagrams from code. Other tools include Architecture Explorer, which lets you browse and explore your solution.
For more info, see the following links:
To download the RC release, visit: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate RC
To see the RC documentation, see Modeling the Application.
To discuss these tools, visit the Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Discovery & Modeling Tools forum.
Have you tried the PowerToys?
NDepend is certainly the .NET tool you are looking for. It comes with a dependency graph coupled with a dependency matrix. You can try NDepend straight on your code by downloading the free Trial Edition.
More on NDepend Dependency Graph
More on NDepend Dependency Matrix:
Disclaimer: I am part of the tool team
There is a decent, free version of a UML diagramming tool called Argos here http://argouml.tigris.org/features.html. Out of the box it can both forward and reverse engineer Java, I'm fairly certain there are add-ins for Visual Studio that help support forward and reverse engineering of C# code. I would look into that.
Not your answer, but related...
Codeplex's VisioAutoExt library:
http://www.codeplex.com/visioautoext
Visio ActiveX component:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mgold/VisioInDotNet12032006222024PM/VisioInDotNet.aspx
When i search for code in codeplex i found this http://vsdm.codeplex.com/ maybe help you.
With VS2005 & VS2008 you have the option of designing your own modelling language (DSL) here you can choose how your model is rendered, it would be a big investment if its just to make the diagrams look a little better, but it does provide you with option to customise how the code is generated from your model.
You may have tried PowerDesigner, it runs under Eclipse through a plugin and it also supports Visual Studio. The only downside is that it only works on Windows.
Another application for modeling is System Architect from IBM (Popkin). It has been used by some major corporations and is still maintained.