I'd like to add a code generator for given filetype. I came across this example which uses CustomBuildRule. It seems this is only available for C++ projects. Is there an equivalent for C# projects?
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I've recently had to look for a C# porting of the Protocol Buffers library originally developped by Google. And guess what, I found two projects owned both by two very well known persons here: protobuf-csharp-port, written by Jon Skeet and protobuf-net, written by Marc Gravell. My question is simple: which one do I have to choose ?
I quite like Marc's solution as it seems to me closer to C# philisophy (for instance, you can just add attributes to the properties of existing class) and it looks like it can support .NET built-in types such as System.Guid.
I am sure both of them are really great projects but what's your oppinion?
I agree with Jon's points; if you are coding over multiple environments, then his version gives you a similar API to the other "core" implementations. protobuf-net is much more similar to how most of the .NET serializers are implemented, so is more familiar (IMO) to .NET devs. And as Jon notes - the raw binary output should be identical so you can re-implement with a different API if you need to later.
Some points re protobuf-net that are specific to this implementation:
works with existing types (not just generated types from .proto)
works under things like WCF and memcached
can be used to implement ISerializable for existing types
supports inheritance* and serialization callback methods
supports common patterns such as ShouldSerialize[name]
works with existing decorated types (XmlType/XmlElement or DataContract/DataMember) - meaning (for example) that LINQ-to-SQL models serialize out-of-the-box (as long as serialization is enabled in the DBML)
in v2, works for POCO types without any attributes
in v2, works in .NET 1.1 (not sure this is a huge selling feature) and most other frameworks (including monotouch - yay!)
possibly (not yet implemented) v2 might support full-graph* serialization (not just tree serialization)
(*=these features use 100% valid protobuf binary, but which might be hard to consume from other languages)
Are you using other languages in your project as well? If so, my C# port will let you write similar code on all platforms. If not, Marc's port is probably more idiomatic C# to start with. (I've tried to make my code "feel" like normal C#, but the design is clearly based on the Java code to start with, deliberately so that it's familiar to those using Java as well.)
Of course one of the beauties of this is that you can change your mind later and be confident that all your data will still be valid via the other project - they should be absolutely binary compatible (in terms of serialized data), as far as I'm aware.
According to it's GitHub project site protobuf-csharp-port has now been folded into the main Google Protocol Buffers project, so it will be the official .NET implementation of protobuf 3. protobuf-net however was last updated in 2013, although there have been some commits recently in GitHub.
I just switched from protobuf-csharp-port to protobuf-net because:
protobuf-net is more ".net like", i.e. descriptors to serialise members instead of code generation.
If you want to compile protobuf-csharp-port .proto files you have to do a 2 step process, i.e. compile with protoc to .protobin and then compile that with protoGen. protobuf-net does this in one step.
In my case I want to use protocol buffers to replace an xml based communication model between a .net client and a j2ee backend. Since I'm already using code generation I'll go for Jon's implementation.
For projects not requiring java interop I'd choose Marc's implementation, especially since v2 allows working without annotations.
I have a VS 2013 solution with one VB.NET ASP.NET project which references several c# class library projects (not DLLs) within the same solution. I made lots of changes to logic within some of the method overloads in one of the c# projects. Since the VB.NET project uses these overloads extensively, I want to see how many places these methods are referenced. I go to the c# project that contains the changes, right-click the overload I want, and select Find All References, but it only shows me the references in the c# projects. However, when I go to one of those methods in the VB.NET project, it finds all the references within the VB.NET project as well as the method declarations in the c# project.
I could do a solution-wide text search for the method name, but this method name is used multiple times because it's overloaded. Therefore, I want to search for a particular overloaded method signature, not the method name.
Is this a known shortcoming of VS 2013? Something else I've also noticed that I've noticed is that selecting Go To Reference from within a VB.NET project on a method that's declared in a c# project will take you to the object browser rather than directly to the method definition in the source project itself.
This is an old problem, there are many bug feedback reports for it on Microsoft's feedback site. The canonical one is probably this one. Quoting Dustin Campbell's response:
The general problem is that C# and Visual Basic do not share any common infrastructure with regard to the symbol tables that are used for features like Find All References, Go to Definition or Rename. So, such features don't work between multiple languages. That said, we are looking at ways to change this in the future, but the work required is very substantial.
Annotating a bit, the C# and VB.NET IDEs look similar at the surface but they are very different under the hood. Part of that is them being supported by distinct groups within Microsoft, a survival strategy for any software company, big groups don't work. But above all history plays a strong role in this, Visual Basic had strong IDE support for a very long time. They did not throw away that work when they moved to VB.NET, not in the least because they had to support all previous IDE features so not to alienate their existing customer base. The C# team got a fresh start without that baggage, they started from scratch. Inevitably the internals between them, like the IntelliSense symbol tables, are drastically different.
Tackling the "common infrastructure" problem was not forgotten, the Roslyn project was the instrumental step. It took a very long time to get finished but it is ready to go today. Integrated into VS2015. Whether it actually solves this problem is something I don't know yet, I will in a couple of months. Maybe somebody that has the RC version can confirm. They did create two versions of Roslyn, one for C# and another for VB.NET. Uh-oh.
I'm happily developing a language in ANTLR 4.4 / ANTLR4CS, and I'd like to start integrating my language into an IDE. The natural place for me feels like integrating it into Visual Studio. It occurs to me that someone might have figured out a general way to plug an ANTLR lexer into the Visual Studio syntax highlighting system, or ANTLR parsers into an MSBuild task such that errors appear in the Visual Studio error list.
Is there any kind of starting point, base package, plugin system, or similar which lets you integrate an ANTLR4CS language with Visual Studio's language support mechanisms?
Alternatively, has anyone had any success building, say, a Sublime Text build system / language def automatically from their grammar?
#Lucas Trzesniewski wrote:
I did this by reparsing the whole file every time, doing it on a line-by line basis was too much of a PITA for my needs (and our DSL files are small so it works fine).
I don't know if it'll be suitable for your needs, but you can implement a single file generator from a VS extension. The Generate method takes a IVsGeneratorProgress parameter which lets you report errors easily.
I came across Microsoft's Portable Library Tools add-in for Visual Studio, but I see System.Xml.Linq is not in the supported list at this time (but does exist on my target platforms).
Knowing that I'm going to have to do some work myself to get multi-platform linq to xml support, does the PLT add-in do anything else for me?
The goal for portable library tools is to have the minimun set of dependencies in order to allow you to create a cool library for different type of projects. The idea is to not to have dependencies in this kind of library, just Dto, Model and some similar stuff are good examples of use
A word or two about project I have to make.
I have a list of products (XML formatted), and I have to make a bar code of that list.
Here are the requirements:
Technology has to be MFC, VS 2005 or VS2008
All functionality must be in one dll
Same solution should have a simple tester for the dll
I will use pdf417. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF417 http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdf417lib/
Also, I would like to provide an interface, so that different bar codes can be implemented in future.
For example, my dll has "Write" method which is implemented in a separate file for pdf417 and in a separate file for some other bar code, so that user can choose which bar code to use.
Since I have no knowledge of mfc, I really don't know how to even start. I read some tutorials, created the dll with some dummy method, and then tried to use it in tester application, but no luck.
I know that this is a "needle in a haystack" type of a question, but if someone could help me how to setup/architect this project I would be very grateful.
Thanks,
Marko
I don't see how you benefit from using MFC if your DLL's client is not an MFC app. You are better off using a standard C interface in your exported functions if you want to support non-MFC clients. Just create a Win32 project and choose the project type as DLL, then the wizard will generate some example exported function for you. Follow the examples to create your own export functions.