Kenthall.VirtualDrive

After my snafu with NUnit, I decided to look into ways of avoiding this pain.  Googling found a command line utility called subst.  From that I’m creating a GUI wrapper around it, so that you can keep the drive mapping after a reboot.  It will be smart enough to be able to store multiple mappings, as well as seeing the available drives, and storing the settings in a config for use in other computers.  It’s nearing completion, so I’ll be able to eat my own cooking soon.

The other app that I want to get started is an addin for Visual Studio 2005 that would also be used in the Express editions.  Getting source control menus into Express (or any other missing menus, like the other refactoring tools) will ease much pain, instead of trying to remember what needs to be added or checked out when writing code.

General Direction

Looking at http://www.castleproject.org, they have a bunch of sub projects under the Castle banner.  Most of the larger projects are presented clearly, but others, like Aspect#, seem hidden.  It would be nice if we could clearly delineate which projects we have and make them able to independently update content for the website that wouldn’t affect the rest.  (Mikey, that means you have to figure out what you’re coding!!)

It would also be nice if we also had a way to incorporate some of the non dev content, like actually playing the game, character profiles, or whatever, that the larger D&D group could also use.  Like how Duma almost died twice in one sitting would be a good one, or how Taeghen will become our new tank.  How that would happen, I don’t really know, but having that would be nice.  GotDotNet is good for storing the files from the sessions (aka. player characters), but the forums and news are really crude.

Express or SharpDevelop?

Matt Ward put together a very good comparison chart on C# Express and SharpDevelop:

http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/articles/VisualStudioExpressComparison.aspx

Moving Code

For two days I’ve been wondering why NUnit wouldn’t see my new tests I added.  The answer was: I have too much code.  Well, that is, I have too many copies of the source in various directories.

Unlike Visual Studio (or Express Editions), NUnit saves the full paths to the DLL/Project.  Because I moved the code off my thumb drive to another drive, it still held the old path.  And of course the only difference between the two paths was the leading drive letter.

So naturally it’s all NUnit’s fault, how am I expected to know that the paths didn’t change?  Shouldn’t it update automatically…  Oh, boy.

Although, with different people running the code from different computers, this will definitely come up again.  Maybe we should have a tool to mount a drive to any folder so everyone can have, say, an L drive for running, debugging, and checking in/out code.  I’ll have to remember to find one…

Kenthall.Common

I would like to discuss what we should expect in this namespace.

C# Express – No Public modifier on classes

Adding a new class to a project leaves off the public keyword.  Sometimes I forget this and try to start using that class. 

Uh, oh.

That produces a compiler error, of course.

"Error 3 'AssemblyName' is inaccessible due to its protection level"

Is it nit picking to ask that “public” be added to a class?

Code Uploaded to CodePlex!

Put up what I had as far as the code.  Yeah, finally.  If you’re doing this from home, you may need to configure Team Explorer.  CodePlex has some good docs on that.

Adding Folders with Team Explorer

When adding files under source control, I was having trouble unchecking a particular file.  It would always highlight everything by default, even though there was nothing highlighted.  So if you were to try to uncheck one, all would suddenly select add all would either uncheck or check (depending on the status of the item you had selected)!!!  Clicking on the right Folder column unselects everything.  How annoying!

Addin Menus for C# Express

The last post reminded me of something.  We’re going to have to figure out how Jamie was able to get those menus into the Express version.  With the IDE looking like the crippled VS, it seems that if addins can add their own menus, then they could also “accidentally” turn on menus that would otherwise not be seen.

We’ll have to research this further.  The Free Partner DVD a bunch of stuff, but it seems like products other partners are trying to sell, and not some sort of Extensibility SDK for VS.  Here’s the main bit:

Create your own one-of-a-kind IDE with modifications developed by Microsoft® Visual Studio® Industry Partners (VSIPs). Order a free VSIP DVD* to get a taste of what’s available. It’s loaded with more than 50 add-ins and packages—full and trial versions. You’ll get tools, languages, and components that can help you develop applications for Windows®, Web services, and mobile devices.

Ah, and the SDK is a free download (you just have to register on the VSIP site, free to register).  Sweet.

Debugging NUnit test within C# Express

Apperently there was a time when the TestDriven.Net put the context menus in all the studio products, including the Express Editions.  When did that feature get pulled?  It looks like after the RTM of Express.  There’s a dialog that pops up during installation that allows you to reset the menus, leave them the way they are or cancel.  I even had an older version of TestDriven, but the all do the same thing.

What we have to do is explained on Charlie Poole’s blog on nunit.com entitled Running NUnit Automatically in C# Express.  You basically fire up the GUI from inside a project.  Hence the reason for our Kenthall.TestHelper assembly, and that’s all it does for now.