I live in Visual Studio with Resharper.
What free plug ins should I get for Eclipse to get me to the same level as I am used to in VS with Resharper.
I have found Eclipse to have many of the Resharper features built in, but don't want to be missing great productivity tools.
Eclipse indeed already ships with decent builtin refactoring and static code analysis capabilities. However, there are several plugins available which improves static code analysis, the popular ones being FindBugs and PMD. They will report about potential programming bugs. Further there's also a static code style checker plugin CheckStyle which will report about potential programming style flaws which may not necessarily lead to runtime errors, but rather to maintainability problems.
Related questions:
Recommended Eclipse plugins for source code analysis
Generally recommended Eclipse plugins
Hidden features of Eclipse
Related
I'd like to import gendarme reports into sonarqube.
A sonar-csharp-gendarme-plugin existed once for this purpose, but seems to have been abandoned.
Is there any replacement?
There is no replacement, and it is not supported. Gendarme is an inactive project for quite a while, and I really doubt its development will resume: Indeed, like FxCop, it does analysis based on the assemblies, not directly on the source code.
Now, with Visual Studio 2015, Roslyn analyzers are executed live as you type. This raised the bar of what people expect from code analyzers, and FxCop analyzers as well as Gendarme ones should be rewritten using Roslyn to improve the end-user's experience.
Now, if you really would like to, you still could develop a SonarQube plugin to integrate Gendarme results, but I don't think it is a good idea.
I currently develop C++ and C# applications with VS2008.
I have the need to have the IDE as well on our target demonstrator platform to debug and fix etc.
Could I use the Express editions for that task or are there any major drawbacks?
Any experience is welcome, also for VS2010.
You would only have to tweak things in order to compile for 64 bit (true only for 2008, that's easy in 2010), but no major functional drawback, except as Binary Worrier says it can be frustrating
However it is commonly accepted to have the full IDE on a target demo platform without buying another license, so why not deploying full IDE on it?
From About Licensing
Developer Tools – per user license
You must acquire a license for each
user you permit to access or use the
software. You may install any number
of copies on any number of devices for
access and use by one user to design,
develop, test and demonstrate
programs. Only licensed users may
access the software.
I normally don't like to just post links as answers, but this Wikipedia Article covers the differences in depth.
I've personally found coming down from the full- to the express-editions painful and limiting, you're forever "bumping your head" off some limitation or missing feature, very frustrating.
I use vs2008 at the buro and vs2008 c# excpess at home.
the limitations i come across were
c# express doesn-t like solution folders containing projects and cannot load other project types (ie setup-projects, mstest projects).
i had no painful and limiting experience yet because i use nunit instead of mstest and only ms-databases. express has advanced options (disabled by default) that give you the debug/release build feature.
by the way you donot need a visual studio to debug dotnet-applications. the dotnet-sdk has a gui debugger that can do the job but it is not as comfortable as vs. to rebuild you can use msbuild.
According to this feature matrix, Visual Studio 2010 Premium (RC) includes "static code analysis".
However, adding calls to Contract.Requires at the start of my methods doesn't seem to have any effect. I don't get runtime exceptions if the contract is violated. I don't get compiler warnings if a contract cannot be proven. I also can't find a "Code Contracts" tab in the project settings.
Am I missing something obvious or is this feature only available in the Ultimate edition?
There does indeed seem to be some confusion about whether or not Code Contracts is included in the framework that comes with beta 2 of VS2010, or even in VS2010 itself. The Code Contracts forum (and expecially this post) has several mentions of this with no answers as of yet.
I don't think that Code Contracts falls under the heading of static code analysis. I think static code analysis refers to other code analysis tools like FxCop.
I have tried using Contract.Requires in VS2010 beta 2 ultimate edition, but I get the same behaviour as you. If you look in the project properties under the Code Analysis tab, you can enable code analysis, but this doesn't relate to Code Contracts.
According to the comment by Melitta (from the Base Class Libraries Team) on the connect article Make data contract static checking available in Professional Edition:
...but the restriction on the static analysis tool stands for this upcoming release. It keeps the code analysis story consistent, in that the static analysis tools require VSTS.
This suggests that you (will) have to have the team system version to get the compile-time version of Code Contracts.
To get static analysis in Beta 2 you have to download and install the Code Contracts bits (1.2.21023.14 or higher) from MSDN DevLabs. Then under the project properties, there will now be a Code Contracts tab... from here you can turn on static analysis...
The behaviour you're seeing is because the Code Contracts API is in mscorlib assembly, which allows asserts to work, but nothing else.
I'm assuming this won't be necessary by RTM.
You need to turn on the code contracts runtime checking in the project properties. If that settings pane doesn't exist then you need to install the Code Contracts download from Microsoft (despite the fact that the Contract.Requires exists in the framework).
Only the runtime checking is available in the Professional editions.
I'm curious about your thoughts on moving to a new IDE (specifically Eclipse). I have been hearing wonderful things about it from this community and I'm always on the lookout to try new things.
Currently I'm running Visual Studio 2005, with a bunch of external commands loaded (for compiling down to a binary, running lint, etc). We're developing C code for microcontrollers.
I've read over some of the other threads on here about the advantages and disadvantages to Eclipse and Visual Studio (specifically SO - best IDE thread and SO - best C IDE thread), but I'd like to hear your thoughts on using it for programming an embedded environment. I'd imagine that there is a simple way to use the external tools that Visual Studio currently uses (it simply calls various batch files that we've created).
Is it worth it to specifically switch over to Eclipse?
Answer to you question about way to call external tools: no problem - from eclispe you can anything: external program, batch file etc. Moreover, if you use custom build generator - you could use it transparent with eclipse.
I don't think I would switch from Visual Studio to Eclipse in hopes of getting a better IDE. Typically an embedded manufacturer makes plugins and toolchains that work specificially with Eclispe, that's what makes it worth using in the Embedded world. For example with the NetBurner plug-ins, when creating a new project you can just select New NetBurner Device Excecutable, or New NetBurner Library, all the default includes and libraries get set up for you and the proper cross platform tool chain is set up for you automatically. In the NetBurner case it also uses the Eclipse managed build process (as opposed to make files) which I find nice. There is also support for using make files if you prefer that option.
While I have a couple of tools set up to run as external tools (lint, an auto version updater, DOS prompt etc) most steps can be triggered from pre-build or post-build steps or there are many many add-ons for common needs like source code management, bug tracking, etc. There is great support for SVN, Trac and Mylyn for example. I use both VS2010 and Eclipse. I like them both but VS2010 is the better IDE. It's a little hard to compare because I do C# (and a little C++/CLI )in VS and C++ in Eclipse. That said, I wouldn't relish the though of trying set up VS to do my embedded tasks.
I've been programming in Linux/UNIX for several years now, but recently I needed to do some stuff in VS2008. I had difficulties with understanding how VS organizes work. Do you know any resources (free web pages preferred, but books also acceptable) which would show me a general picture and explain at least some details? Examples welcome, comparison with typical UNIX stack very welcome.
I don't need a language (C#/C++/VB/...) reference/guide; I've seen some of them and none of them seem to suggest how to work with VS efficiently.
You might be interested in introductions to MSBuild, the project format of Visual Studio. Whereas in UNIX you have a autoconfig script, and Makefiles, VS2008 allows most configuration through right clicks and menu options.
A second area of interest will likely be build configurations. Instead of re-running the configure script on different targets, or for different stacks, you specify targets with the configuration manager. Once you select a new configuration ("x86", or "Release", or custom ones like "Production"), VS churns for a while, as it updates the Intellisense of your new preprocessor definitions, for example, and Resource files. Your "Debug" configuration will likely define the macro "DEBUG", so you can use regions surrounded with #ifdef DEBUG, for example.
Visual Studio organizes common groups of source files into "Projects", which can be referenced by one or more "Solutions". Projects establish interdependency on one another, and external libraries. If you look at the structure of the projects in the Microsoft Enterprise Library, you will notice that there are several different Solution files (*.sln) which encompass different groups of common project files. You might have a different solution file, for example, if you want to reduce load/compile time, by not loading the unit test projects with every build.
So, analogies:
UNIX way:
# ./configure
# make
# nano Makefile
# make
VS2008 way:
# (Set up "Project Properties", Conditional Compilation Symbols, Build Paths, all from GUI application)
# (Click Build)
# (Change Configuration)
# (Click Build)
I don't have any links for you, but:
Visual Studio can open one and only one Solution at a time
A Solution may have zero (not very useful) or more Projects
Code (in whatever language) goes into projects
Projects can have any number of files and/or directories
Projects can reference files anywhere, not just within their own directory structure (though few do)
Visual Studio is a very flexible and powerful IDE. I think the best way to get the big picture is to build that big picture yourself in your own terms by using the heck out of it.
Build configurations and project properties are definitely two areas you will want to focus on.
You should explore the various options and configuration switches for generating assemblies and how they are managed in general. Learning the various build options and how assemblies are managed can save you headaches down the road.
The VS debugger is a thing of beauty and I recommend investing some time in exploring its capabilities. I recommend you familiarize yourself with:
Breakpoint management (especially the breakpoint window) and also conditional breakpoints
The Watch and Locals windows
Thread and Memory windows and tools
Immediate window (often overlooked and underrated if you ask me)
Finally, you should take a look at some tried and tested tools and plugins and get familiar with them. I would personally recommend ReSharper, Dependancy Walker, and .NET Reflector. ReSharper is an excellent productivity tool and Dependancy Walker and .NET Reflector are excellent analysis and debugging aids
Here's a couple of handy stackoverflow threads:
Do you have any recommended add-ons/plugins for Microsoft Visual Studio?
Favourite Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts
Have you considered installing cygwin and gcc? If you're looking to write a console app, it might just do the trick.