I can’t remember where I read it….

Temporarily Disabling ReSharper

I have ReSharper installed and think it is a great tool for productivity, but occasionally I find it useful to temporarily disable it to speed up Visual Studio (especially so on my old slow laptop). This is achieved in two different ways, depending on the version of ReSharper.

In versions prior to version 5, ReSharper appears in the Add-in Manager dialog, accessed via the Tools menu. Using this dialog, you can uncheck the ReSharper add-in which will suspend it (the menu will still be visible, but its functionality will be disabled).

Checking it again will re-enable it. Both of these actions can be performed without restarting Visual Studio.

In version 5, ReSharper no longer appears in the add-ins dialog. At first glance, I though the ability to disable ReSharper was no longer available. As it turns out, it is now part of ReSharper itself and is accessed via the Tools -> Options -> ReSharper -> General dialog. Clicking the suspend button will suspend ReSharper and disable its functionality. Once suspended, clicking the resume button will re-enable it.

This applies to all versions of Visual Studio - the difference is based on the version of ReSharper only.

Add comment Permalink June 10th, 2010 Adrian Banks 502 Views

Useful Diagnostic Tools

I recently visited a customer site to diagnose some problems with an application deployed on a server. Because I was effectively “visiting blind” in not knowing what was wrong or even if I would have internet access, I had to pre-empt any potential problems and take whatever tools I would need to diagnose them with me.

The following is a list of the tools I took:

• Active Ports
  This is an equivalent to running netstat -nabv 5 from the command line, but wraps a nice GUI around it with the ability to look up the host names for connected IP addresses.
• BareTail
  This is a simple log file viewer that can “tail” a running log and apply highlighting based on custom searches.
• CorFlags
  This is a tool that comes as part of the Visual Studio SDK and enables a .Net application to be forced to run as 32-bit on 64-bit hardware. Existing applications can be tweaked without re-compilation.
• Culture Launcher
  This is one of my own tools that can launch an .Net application using a different culture/language. The culture and UI culture can be set independently of each other.
• Error Lookup
  This is a small tool that comes with Visual Studio (when you install the C++ components). It enables Win32 error codes to be translated into “meaningful” English error messages.
• Managed Stack Explorer
  This is a tool that can preiodically capture stack traces from running .Net applications. It also shows a variety of information about the managed processes and threads running on a machine.
• Red Gate Diagnostics Tool
  This is a tool from Red Gate that collects lots of system information from a computer. It is very useful because of the amount of data that it collects all in one place.
• Snippet Compiler
  This is like a cut-down version of Visual Studio. It has an IDE-like editor (with only basic intellisense) and can compile and run .Net applications. The biggest plus is that it requires no installation.
• SpaceMonger
  This is a tool that gives a visual representation of disk usage for a whole drive. This version is an older version of the tool, but is the last version that is free.
• SysInternals
  This is the famous SysInternals Suite of tools, now owned by Microsoft, but still occasionally updated with new features and bug fixes. This contains lots of file, disk, network, process, registry and system utilities.

This toolset (along with a few custom-written SQL scripts) provided me with everything I needed to collect all the information I needed to get to the bottom of the problems.

2 comments Permalink July 8th, 2008 Adrian Banks 8366 Views

Building Solutions Without Visual Studio

When working with several source control branches, especially with a large solution with many projects, it is not always practical to open Visual Studio to perform a quick build. Using NAnt is one alternative solution, but this requires creating and maintaining a build script. Using MSBuild from the command line is another option, but this involves getting the command line arguments correct, and working with command line output is not easy to visually filter. The same goes for using Visual Studio from the command line.

Gaston Milano has created a simple tool called Build Console capable of loading both MSBuild and Visual Studio solution files, and building any of the available build targets.

It’s main features are:

• The ability to choose which target/project to build.
• A build report in a tree structure to show the status of each project built.
• The ability to choose the verbosity of the build output.
• A coloured build output log to distinguish different types out log output.
• A ‘quick history’ to load recently built solutions.

Whilst a little rough around the edges, it comes in very handy for those times where you just need to compile quickly without the overhead of loading Visual Studio.

Add comment Permalink October 18th, 2007 Adrian Banks 2223 Views

Running The OUTPUT Clause From C#

SQL Server 2005 introduced a new feature called the output clause. This enables INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE queries to be run, with the original information which has been changed being returned. This is particularly useful if you want to run a query and know what has been changed by it by returning the identites of the modified rows.

The full documentation for the output clause can be found in SQL Server 2005 Books Online.

In trying to use this feature, I could get it to work in a query window, but when trying it using C# and ADO, it was not obvious how to execute the query and return the results because the ExecuteNonQuery() method of SqlCommand only returns the count of the number of rows that have been updated. After a bit of unsuccessful searching, I came across a post by Keyvan Nayyeri with something that gave me an idea:

Switching my code around to run the update query using the ExecuteReader() method of SqlCommand as would be used for a SELECT query proved to be fruitful, enabling the returned result set to be read.

2 comments Permalink May 1st, 2007 Adrian Banks 3496 Views

Windows And .Net Framework Default Versions

Aaron Stebner has compiled a list of which version of the .Net Framework is included in which version of Windows by default:

^* although it appears as an OS component, it is actually just an MSI based installer.

The MSI based installers can be used to install or uninstall the .Net Framework from the OS, enabling it to be removed completely if needed.

Very useful if you are targeting specific platforms with your .Net applications.

Add comment Permalink April 24th, 2007 Adrian Banks 1891 Views