Nov
12

Visual Studio 2010 Add Reference Dialog Improvements

Marius Bancila CTPs & Betas, Tools, Visual Studio 3 comments

I was doing some development in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and I had to add some references to my projects. When I opened the Add Reference dialog I realized something was wrong: it was working very fast. Since I’m using Visual Studio 2008 for every day development I am used to wait tens of seconds before the dialog loads all the references and only after that I can select what I want. But in Visual Studio 2010 it popped up instantly and all the tabs were browse able at the same speed. This was not normal. Usually new versions are slower that older ones (and I suspect Visual Studio 2010 has such features), but Add Reference dialog works great.

Then I browsed the web I came across this post from Scott Guthrie who explain what has changed:

  • default active tab when the Add Reference dialog is opened is now Projects, and not .NET
  • .NET and COM tabs load asynchronously in worker threads, populating the lists as references are discovered, without blocking the UI thread, which means you can browse through the references as soon as you open the tab

There are only two things that I can say: first is that I’m impressed. I now get instantly what it used to take maybe half a minute. Second is that I’m puzzled that it took so many years to implement that. Anyway, good work.

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Jul
29

STM.NET

Marius Bancila .NET, C#, CTPs & Betas, Parallel Programming, Tools Add your comment

Microsoft has made available a first beta version of an experimental version of .NET 4.0, called .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 Enabled for Software Transactional Memory v1.0. Since that is quite a long name, the short one is STM.NET. This is a special version of .NET 4.0 that enables software transactional memory for C#. It allows programmers to demarcate regions of code as operating in an atomic, isolated transaction from other code running concurrently. The means to do this is a delegate called Atomic.Do, or try-catch blocks. Might be that in the future an ‘atomic’ block will be added to the language(s).

This first version of the framework, also comes with additional tools:

  • tooling (debugging, ETW tracing)
  • lock interoperability
  • interoperability with traditional transactions
  • annotations (how methods run in transactions, suppressed transactions on methods, etc.)
  • static and dynamic checking of annotations

On the other hand there are some limitations:

  • only works for C# for now
  • cannot be installed on a machine with VS 2010, nor the opposite
  • there is only a 32-bit version

More information about it can be found at the STM team blog or MSDN DevLabs.

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May
31

Code Contracts in Visual Studio 2010

Marius Bancila .NET, C#, CTPs & Betas, Tools, Visual Studio 1 comment

Visual Studio 2010 has support for code contracts that allow to express pre-, post-conditions and invariants to your .NET code.

Let’ say you want to create a function to return a random value in a range. This could look like it:

    class Program
    {
        Random rng = new Random();

        public int GetRandom(int min, int max)
        {
            return rng.Next(min, max);
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Program p = new Program();
            int n1 = p.GetRandom(10, 20);
            int n2 = p.GetRandom(10, 10);
        }
    }

However, at a rough analysis one can find two problems:

  • Second call to GetRandom(), is not well formed, because the range is 0
  • Radnom.Next returns a value greater or equal to the first argument, and lower than the second.

What code contracts provide is a mean to check that some statements, like:

  • maximum value of the range should always be greater than the minimum value
  • returned value should always be in the interval, equal or greater than the minimum, and equal or less than then maximum

The first is a pre-requisite, and the second is a post-requisite. We can specify those with:

        public int GetRandom(int min, int max)
        {
            Contract.Requires(max > min);
            Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result() >= min &&
                             Contract.Result() <= max);

            return rng.Next(min, max);
        }

The Contract class is available in namespace System.Diagnostics.Contracts. To enable the static checking, you have to go to Project Properties > Code Contracts and select "Perform Static Contract Checking."

Code Contracts Property Page

Code Contracts Property Page

When you build, you get the following warnings:

Code Contracts warnings

Code Contracts warnings

The first says that the call GetRandom(10, 10) does not match the pre-condition. The second warning indicates that the post-condition is not met. It isn't possible to know whether Random.Next() returns a value that hods the post-condition. But if you check the "Perform Runtime Contract Checking" it asserts at runtime, when the return value is outside the interval (not possible with this code sample).

You can read more about code contracts on the BCL team's blog. It features a list of possible constructs for pre- and post-requisites, but also object invariants.

Code Contracts are also available for Visual Studio 2008. For downloads and additional information check the following links:

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May
25

What’s new in Visual Studio 2010 for Unmanaged Development

Marius Bancila CTPs & Betas, Visual Studio Add your comment

Here is a list of new things in Visual Studio 2010 for unmanaged development.

Visual Studio IDE:

Visual C++

Visual Studio Tools:

Additional readings:

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May
19

Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Beta 1

Marius Bancila CTPs & Betas, Visual Studio Add your comment

Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 beta 1 for MSDN subscribers starting this Monday, and for the public starting this Wednesday.

According to Kirill Osenkon, 95% of the planned functionality is already there. This new version of Visual Studio is WPF based. Among the many new features, one important addition is the inclusion of F# as a first class language targeting the .NET framework. More information on the new features are available on Jason Zander’s blog.

The bits can be downloaded from here.

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Mar
12

MFC Feature Pack

Marius Bancila CTPs & Betas, MFC, Windows Programming Add your comment

At the beginning of January, Microsoft released a beta version of MFC Feature Pack, an exstension to the MFC shipped with Visual Studio 2008. This feature pack allows developers to create applications with the look and feel of Office, Visual Studio and Internet Explorer. MFC application can now support:

  • Office Ribbon
  • Office 2003, XP and 2007 look and feel
  • docking toolbars and panes in the Visual Studio style
  • customizable toolbars and menus
  • advanced GUI controls
  • advaced MDI tabs and groups

I have published an article on www.codeguru.com about enabling Office 2007 style on a MDI application. The article is called MFC Feature Pack: An Introduction. I encourage you to read it. A Romanian version will be available soon at www.codexpert.ro.

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