The system for saving/reloading values is convenient but it has one annoying gotcha for a developer: The ID changes on every recompile and thus it's basically useless in development. Are there any easy fixes to this? Google only tells me others have the same annoyance so I doubt there's anything other than doing it myself.
Edit: David Yew is right about the file.
Have you set the version of your exe in the properties of the project? If you set this to something other than 0.0.0.0 I think it will maintain the settings for you.
Related
When troubleshooting our applications, in many situations I cannot be sure what branch the assemblies originally come from, due to an imperfect release cycle and human error.
(We have quite a lot of different bugfix/feature/test/release branches etc. in our TFS).
The PDB-files can help sometimes, in a test environment at least, but sometimes they're missing or outdated / belong to assemblies from another branch.
So, I was trying to think of a way to include the source branch information inside the assembly directly.
Surprisingly, I could not easily find a straight forward way online to accomplish this.
My answer below explains my approach. I would be happy about feedback or alternative solutions.
In short: I created a custom attribute that I put intoAssemblyInfo.cs. Inside the attribute's constructor, the server path for the current assembly is queried from TFS and compiled into it.
It's basically a combination of the following:
Can I add custom version strings to a .net DLL?
How do I get the path of the assembly the code is in?
Get TFS mapped folder of a local sub folder of the solution?
(Note: I cannot post the actual source code due to company restrictions, but I think it's pretty straight forward.)
To get the attribute's value later is unfortunately not as easy as getting the version number from the DLL-file's properties, but at least it is possible now to get the information I need with minimum effort. (I use a small PowerShell script for that.)
I need to change the config file myApp.exe.configat runtime. How to make sure that the program would be started to work with a modified file without leaving the program?
It may be necessary to use a ConfigurationManager.
Thank you!
It's definitely possible, I did this at work a while back. Essentially, you can load a new app.config file into memory, then tell .NET to use the new file. From that point on, all variables in the Configurarion section change when read using the standard .NET calls.
Sorry I cant give specifics, you might have to Google some more - but at least you know its possible!!
Having said this, I believe this is the wrong architectural path to go down. Far better to store your settings in an external file in your own format. It really is a royal pain to update app.config, and if we hadnt had to do it for compatibility reasons with legacy assemblies it would not have been worth it in the least. The legacy assemblies used WCF which in itself was a mistake. WCF is a ghastly architectural morass, with few redeeming features compared to any of the modern alternatives.
Update
See Overriding App.Config settings.
See Change default app.config at runtime.
UPDATE: In trying to replicate this problem one more time to answer your questions I could not! I can only conclude that my initial setup of Mercurial was problematic and/or possibly I was trying to checkin a build that failed compilation before the checkin. Sigh! Thank you so very much for your help. I gave credit for the help on how to do a script. I need to try that for general purposes.
hi all, I hope you can help me :). I am trying to see if Mercurial would be a good DCVS for my project at work, and I'm surely a newbie to many things.
We have a fairly large codebase in C# (Dotnet3.0 not 3.5 , WindowsXP) and it utilizes the GUID feature. I confess to know little about how or why we use the GUID, but I do know that I cannot touch it.
So, when I try hg clone, it fails unless I change the GUID in the cloned directory (ie create new GUID in Visual Studio and then paste that new GUID to replace the old one). To me, this completely defeats the purpose and utility of quick easy clones. It also makes difficult all the many workflows that require multiple clones.
Is there a workaround, or is there something I'm doing wrong? How can I simplify and/or remove this problem?
Would Bazaar make this easier?
Thank you!
You can probably do it in an update hook. I'm no windows scripter, but if you can write a powershell script that calls [system.guid].newguid() and replaces it in that file you can use a hook like:
[hooks]
update=c:\scripts\replace-guid-in-file.PS1 path\to\file\with\guid
Whatever file you're changing these guids in should probably be untracked (put it in your .hgignore) or you're going to end up with a lot of accidental guid changes commited to the repo.
Is this GUID something the editor creates in the project files? In that case, do not check in the project files, or only those that do not contain the GUID.
I need to move all the hard coded strings in my source code in .resx files. Is there a tool that could help me find all the hardcoded strings within C# code?
ReSharper 5 is obvious a choice, but many tips must be set so as to achieve your goals,
Turn on solution wide analysis.
Go to ReSharper|Options|Code Inspection|Inspection Severity|Potential Code Quality Issues|Element is localizable set to Show as error.
Go back to Solution Explorer and click on the project (csproj).
In Properties panel under ReSharper category, set Localizable to Yes, Localizable Inspector to Pessimistic.
Then you can find almost all you need in Errors in Solution panel.
Hope this helps.
Or do a search based upon a regular expression like discussed here:
https://vosseburchttechblog.azurewebsites.net/index.php/2014/12/16/find-all-string-literals-in-c-code-files-but-not-the-ones-in-comments/
(?=(^((?!///).)*$)).*((".+?")|('.+?')).*
You could always do a search for the " sign in all the .cs files. That should get you to most of them, without too much noise.
This tool http://visuallocalizer.codeplex.com/ allows for batch-move strings to resources, together with other features. It is FOSS so maybe you can give it a try.
(I am involved)
Resharper 5.0 (Beta) allows you to move strings to resources (it has built in Localization feature). Give it a try. Beta works fine, i use it every day and have no problems. Best of all it's free until out of beta. I even recommend using night builds as they seem to be stable.
Software localization and globalization have always been tough and at times unwanted tasks for developers. ReSharper 5 greatly simplifies working with resources by providing a full stack of features for resx files and resource usages in C# and VB.NET code, as well as in ASP.NET and XAML markup.
Dedicated features include Move string to resource, Find usages of resource and other navigation actions. Combined with refactoring support, inspections and fixes, you get a convenient localization environment.
Some are found by FxCop. Not sure what its limits are, I think it depends on parameter and property names (eg: a property called "Text" is considered to be localized).
OK so that title sucks a little but I could not think of anything better (maybe someone else can?).
So I have a few questions around a subject here. What I want to do is create a program that can take an object and use reflection to list all its properties, methods, constructors etc. I can then manipulate these objects at runtime to test, debug and figure out exactly what some of my classes / programs are doing whilst they are running, (some of them will be windows services and maybe installed on the machine rather than running in debug from VS).
So I would provide a hook to the program that from the local machine (only) this program could get an instance of the main object and therefore see all the sub objects running in it. (for security the program may need to be started with an arg to expose that hook).
The "reflection machine" would allow for runtime manipulation and interrogation.
Does this sound possible?
Would the program have to provide a hook or could the "reflection machine" take an EXE and (if it knew all the classes it was using), create an object to use?
I know you can import DLL's at runtime so that it knows about all sorts of classes, but can you import individual classes? I.E. Say I have project 'Y' that is not compiled to a DLL but I want to use the "reflection machine" on it, can I point at that directory and grab the files to be able to reference those classes?
EDIT: I would love to try and develop it my self but I already have a long list of projects I would like to do and have already started. Why reinvent the wheel when there is already a great selection to choose from.
Try looking at Crack.NET. It is used to do runtime manipulation and interrogation on WPF/WinForms but the source is available and might be a good start if it already doesn't meet your needs.
It sound as if Corneliu Tusnea's Hawkeye might be close to what you're looking for runtime interrogation of objects/properties/etc. He calls it the .NET Runtime Object Editor. I'm not sure if the homepage I linked to above or the CodePlex project is the best place to start.
It's a bit out of date now, I think, but there's an earlier version of it on CodeProject where you can see the source code for how and what he did.
Powershell actually does nearly all of this, if I properly understand what you are saying.
See this answer on how to build a "reflection engine".
All you need to do is to drop that set of machinery in the your set of available
runtime libraries and it does what you want, I think.
(It might not be as easy as I've made it sound in practice).
My guess is you'll also want a runtime compiler, so that you can
manufacture instrumented/transformed variants of the program under inspection
to collect the runtime data you want. You may find that such
machinery provide static analysis results that let you avoid
doing the runtime analysis in many cases.