Development Nirvana

Overview

I recently ditched my AMD desktop machine and picked up an ASUS G1 notebook. I like ASUS products, in fact I based my Media Center around an ASUS motherboard. With the recent release of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, I took the opportunity to build out a W2K3R2 based development server. After insalling Visual Studio 2005, I had to add a bunch of tools to complete my development environment. As I add these items to my VM, I'm going to capture it and update it for future builds. I do anticipate creating a Vista VM as soon as the VS2005 SP is availabe, so I will need to go through this procedure at least one more time.

Visual Studio

1. Visual Studio 2005 SP1: It's important that you read Jon Galloway's Things I wish I had known before installed Visual Studio Service Pack 1, before installing this update. In addition you may run out of contiguous memory space during the install, so you should probably follow these intstructions before attempting it.

.Net Framework 3.0

1. Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components: The Windows SDK includes content for application development with the APIs in Windows Vista, including the .NET Framework 3.0 technologies: .NET Framework 2.0, Windows® Presentation Foundation, Windows® Communication Foundation, Windows® Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace™.
2. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation): Compatible with the released versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Microsoft Windows Vista, and the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components. Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine, and tools for quickly building workflow-enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 namespace (System.Workflow), an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
3. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP: The Visual Studio 2005 extensions for.NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP provides developers with support for building .NET Framework 3.0 applications using the released version of Visual Studio 2005. This is the last release of this technology that will be in the form of a set of extensions for Visual Studio 2005.

Web Services

1. Web Service Software Factory: The Web Service Software Factory is a cohesive collection of guidance that enables architects and developers to design and build higher quaility services and achieve more predictable results in less time by applying proven practices and patterns directly within Visual Studio 2005. Requires the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit Download (GAX) expands the capabilities of Visual Studio 2005 by allowing architects and developers to run guidance packages, such as those included in Software Factories, which automate key development tasks from within the Visual Studio environment.
2. Web Services Contract First (WSCF): WSCF offers a simple yet powerful WSDL Wizard that abstracts away all the nitty-gritty details of WSDL and therefore does not give room for making errors and wrong assumptions just by trying to use and applying everything that can be done stated by the original WSDL specification.

Unit Testing

1. NUnit: NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current production release, version 2.2, is the fourth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET.
2. MBUnit: MbUnit is an extensible .Net test framework. As in NUnit, tests are created at runtime using Reflection and custom attributes. MbUnit differentiates itself from NUnit in it's extensibility model. It contains a number of tests that go beyond the simple unit testing, such as a greater assert range, pairwise testing, combinatorial testing, data oriented testing, etc...
3. NUnitAddIn: The NUnit Addin allows you to run unit tests inside Visual Studio 2005.
4. JetBrains UnitRun: ReSharper UnitRun is a free add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that allows you to automatically run and profile unit tests. This user-friendly tool detects test fixtures of the supported unit testing frameworks and lets you run or profile them right from the code editor or from Visual Studio's Solution Explorer. An MBUnit PlugIn for UnitRun is available as well.
5. NUnit Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2005: For NUnit users who have switched to Visual Studio 2005 and would like a reasonably decent set of keyboard shortcuts for some of the most common uses of the NUnit framework, you might find these code snippets to be of use.
6. Simple TDD Visual Studio Templates: To speed up the creation of solutions using NUnit or MbUnit? for unit test, use these two templates to plug into Visual Studio to do it for you. There's one for testing with MbUnit? 2.3 RTM and one for NUnit 2.2.9.
7. Spell Checker for HTML and ASP.NET pages: Spell checker works in Source view, it is able to extract text from markup elements and use Office 2003 spell checker to check the text. Spell checker is able to handle entities to some extent (they are considered whitespace for now).

Refactoring Tools

1. Resource Refactoring Tool: The Resource Refactoring Tool provides developers an easy way to extract hard coded strings from the code to resource files.
2. DevExpress Refactor for ASP.NET Version 2.1.3: Refactor! is freely available to all ASP.NET 2.0 developers and offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enable you and your team to simplify and shape complex code and HTML markup - making your web applications easier to read and less costly to maintain.
3. Cool Commands 4.0: Lots of helpful shortcuts for accomplishing tasks.
4. SlickEdit Gadgets: Some useful, some fun utilities to help out your IDE experience
   • Editor Gadgets: A Line Ruler, Indentation Guide, Auto Copy selection, and a fun Editor Graphic.
   • Command Spy: Learn what commands are attached to what keyboard shortcuts to help you become a keyboarding guru.
   • File Explorer: Use the File Explorer rather than the IDE open file dialog to drag and drop files into your project.
   • Data Object Analyzer: Inspect the contents of any clipboard operation, or drag-and-drop operation, from any other application.
   • The SLOC Report: An easy way to count the lines of code. The line count is divided into three categories: code, comments, and whitespace.
5. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements: Visual Studio 2005 IDE Enhancements are a set of Visual Studio extensions that are designed to make you more productive. These enhancements are directly integrated into the Visual Studio IDE.
   • Source Code Outliner: The Source Outliner tool is a Visual Studio extension that provides a tree view of your source code's types and members and lets you quickly navigate to them inside the editor.
   • Visual C++ Code Snippets: The Visual C++ Code Snippets tool lets you insert snippets in your code by using a pop-up menu that contains programming keywords. VB.NET and C# languages have this functionality in Visual Studio 2005.
   • Indexed Find: The Indexed Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that uses the Microsoft Indexing Service to provide improved Search capabilities to the integrated development environment (IDE). It sends the results of a search to the Output Window.
   • Super Diff Utility: The Super Diff Find tool is a Visual Studio extension that compares text files. It uses color coding and graphics to show the difference between the files in deleted text (red), changed text (blue), inserted text (green).
   • Event Toaster Utility: The Event Toaster tool is a Visual Studio extension that notifies users about specific events within the Visual Studio IDE.
6. XPathMania: An XPath Tool Window for Visual Studio 2005. Produces by the Mvp.Xml project team.

Configuration Management

1. Subversion: Subversion is a free/open-source version control system. That is, Subversion manages files and directories, and the changes made to them, over time. This allows you to recover older versions of your data, or examine the history of how your data changed.
2. TortoiseSVN: TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.
   Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.
   TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don't need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.
3. CruiseControl.Net: CruiseControl.NET is an Automated Continuous Integration server, implemented using the Microsoft .NET Framework.
4. Trac: Trac is a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system. It provides an interface to Subversion and an integrated wiki. Setting up Trac was a little involved, and that will form the basis for another blog post.