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

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?

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.

Express Has No Solution Items

Why does it not have solution items?  Cause its free!  Ah, well, I think we’ll just dump all the items into a single project.  Maybe we can rename Kenthall.TestHelper into something for the entire solution.  Right now we only have the snk file and a FxCop file, so there isn’t too much yet.

We could probably edit the solution file by hand and add in the items manually, but I’d want to just be able to do everything from within the confines of the Express product.