Useful Tools for .NET Development  

Thursday, September 17 2009

Over the last several months there have been a number of tools, snippets, macros, and templates that I’ve used at Lab49 to streamline my .NET development and make things move more quickly. Many of these resources were created by my colleague Dan Simon. Here’s the list:

Tools

Visual Studio Team System (a version of Visual Studio that includes set of tools on top of the standard VS2008): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/default.aspx

StyleCop (Code Style Analysis): http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis

FxCop (Static Code Analysis, we actually use the “Static Analysis” tool in VS Team System, which uses FxCop under the covers): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429476%28VS.80%29.aspx

GhostDoc (Generate XML Comments automatically with some nice features): http://submain.com/products/ghostdoc.aspx

Regionerate (Automatically organize your code with regions): http://www.rauchy.net/regionerate/

Code Snippets and Templates

StyleCopClass.zip: A Visual Studio template for creating StyleCop compliant classes by default. To install copy to C:\Documents And Settings[Your User]\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\Item Tempaltes

Regionerate StyleCop Rules.xml: A set of rules for Regionerate that organizes code according to StyleCop guidelines. To install copy to C:\Program Files\Regionerate\My Code Layouts

StyleCopMacros.vb: A Visual Studio macro that executes a number of useful tools together for making code more StyleCop compliant.

cmdprop.snippet: A snippet for a command property in a ViewModel. To install copy to C:\Documents and Settings[Your User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

filehead.snippet: A snippet for an XML file header including relevant information. To install copy to C:\Documents and Settings[Your User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

notifyprop.snippet: A snippet for a property in a class that implements INotifyPropertyChanged. To install copy to C:\Documents and Settings[Your User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets

It’s important to note that some of these snippets and templates require a little editing for each project they are used on. The filehead.snippet and StyleCopClass.zip files have the name “MyCompany Inc.” in them. To change it just simply open the files in Notepad (or other text editor), and save the files in the appropriate directory outlined above. All of the resources are available on GitHub. Enjoy!


  • Posted by Charlie Robbins

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