JetBrains .NET Tools Blog

We’re happy to finally provide public access to early bits of the renewed ReSharper!

Starting today, you can download nightly ReSharper builds, and the first one is already there for you.

Note that this is only pre-release software. Nightly builds are assembled automatically every night without proper alpha testing, and we can’t guarantee that they will even run on your machine. However, we hope that by participating in this Early Access Program, you can help us gradually improve product quality up to a level that is proper for final release.

Some additional notes on this EAP:

• At this time, we’re only publishing ReSharper builds for VS 2008. We’ll start publishing VS 2010-compatible builds as soon as we verify that ReSharper works decently with VS 2010 Beta 2.
• The UI for many new and improved ReSharper features is not yet finalized. Shortcuts and titles may change as well.

Once you have downloaded, installed, and used a nightly build for a while, please vote for it in the nightly builds page so that other users are able to judge on its quality. If you’re willing to report a bug or feature request, please do so using our bug tracker (here’s how it works).

To further comment on the quality of individual nightly builds please use jetbrains.resharper.eap newsgroup or its web mirror in our development community.

To get an idea of improvements and new features that we’re starting to reveal during this EAP, take a look at the recently published ReSharper 5 Overview.

Happy early accessing!

As promised, we’re publishing a general ReSharper 5.0 overview, elaborating on its feature set.

Please keep in mind that this is a preliminary document. The general picture will stay unchanged, but local amendments cannot be ruled out at this point, and many user interface items will probably change.

Features

• External Sources
  A solution is not limited to sources included in your projects, but also contains sources that were used to build your libraries. Some companies publish parts of their sources using the Source Server feature of debug information files (PDB). This is the same technology that Microsoft uses to provide access to source code for parts of the .NET Framework. With ReSharper 5, you can now access it as if it were a part of your solution. When no sources are available, ReSharper does a decent job of reconstructing types’ structure from metadata for your browsing pleasure.
  
• Structured Patterns
  “I was assigned to a new project, and the source code is full of [your favorite code smell here]. Please, make ReSharper analyze and fix it!”. Fortunately, ReSharper 5 can address this demand. You can set up your own code patterns, search for them, replace them, include them in code analysis, and even use quick-fixes to replace! Building patterns and enforcing good practices has never been this easy. Corporate and team policies, your own frameworks, favorite open source libraries and tools — you can cover them all.
  

• Project Refactorings and Dependencies View
  Once you’ve gotten used to smart, automated refactorings that ReSharper provides, you can’t think of doing them manually anymore. In this release, we extend ReSharper’s coverage to bring you several refactorings for project structure. With ReSharper 5, you can move files and folders between projects; synchronize namespaces to folder structure in any scope - as large as your solution; safely delete obsolete subsystems without going type by type; and split a file with lots of types created from usages into their own dedicated files - in one go. We have also added a special project dependencies view to help you track down excessive dependencies between projects and eliminate them. As an early ReSharper 5 user said, “I’m no longer afraid of restructuring my project. I just go and do it whenever I feel it’s right”.
• Call Tracking
  Find usages, find usages, find usages. Formerly, attempting to track call sequences in code could end up with lost context, lots of Find Results windows and, ultimately, frustration. With ReSharper 5, you can inspect an entire call sequence in a single window, in a simple and straightforward manner. Stuck in unfamiliar code? ReSharper’s code inspecting tools for the rescue!
  
• Value Tracking
  Value Tracking gives you important information about data flow in your program. At any point in your source code, select a variable, parameter, field or property and ask ReSharper to inspect it. You will then see how its value flows through your program, back to its sources or straight to consumers. Wonder how null could be passed to a specific parameter? Track it!
  
• Internationalization
  Software localization and globalization has always been a tough and at times unwanted task for developers. ReSharper 5 greatly simplifies working with resources by providing a full stack of features for ResX files and resource usages in C# and VB.NET code, as well as in ASP.NET and XAML markup. Move string to resource, Find usages of resource and other navigation features, refactoring support, inspections and fixes — all ReSharper goodness for your localization pleasure.

Technologies and Languages

• Visual Studio 2010
  We will publish more information about Visual Studio 2010 support when VS Beta 2 is released. Currently, ReSharper 5 builds support Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.
• C# 4 and VB10
  New language versions nowadays appear at a great speed, and ReSharper team works hard to support them right when you need them. ReSharper 5 provides beta support for C# 4 and VB10, as Visual Studio 2010 does itself. Variance, dynamic types, named arguments and optional parameters, embedded COM assemblies — all of these features are supported in the new ReSharper. During VS 2010 Beta 2 phase we’re hoping to learn from your experience of using these features and improve their support for the Visual Studio 2010 release.
• ASP.NET
  With this new version, ReSharper support for ASP.NET is improved tenfold. In addition to performance and responsiveness improvements, lots of new features for ASP.NET markup files are introduced to make your life easier. Web-specific navigation, master page support, new inspections and syntax highlighting for web files, File Structure and Go to File Member for in-page navigation and overview, live templates for common markup and more!
  
• ASP.NET MVC
  ASP.NET MVC deserved our special attention: special syntax highlighting, inspections, navigation to and from action or controller, and even actions to create new types and methods from usage in pages.
  

Productivity

• IntelliSense
  ReSharper continues to bring first-rate IntelliSense experience, and the new version gives even more. We have added automatic completion for enum members and boolean values, made automatic triggering smarter, and greatly improved performance. Completion for unresolved symbols in local scope is a new ReSharper IntelliSense feature. Another improvement is completion for all-lower text with CamelHumps  — to make cocopro match CodeCompletionProvider — and that means you don’t need to press Shift too often.
• Bookmarks
  This is a simple yet powerful feature: drop a numbered marker with a single shortcut, jump back at any time with another keyboard key. Up to 10 numbered bookmarks, unlimited unnumbered bookmarks, full list of bookmarked positions in a single pop-up window — all to help you instantly switch between several code spots.
  

Inspections

• Solution-Wide Warnings and Suggestions
  We have received a lot of positive feedback from our users regarding solution-wide error analysis, which allows you to immediately see compilation errors in the whole solution. In ReSharper 5, we took this technology to a new level by adding warnings and suggestions to the list. Now you can browse code smells that ReSharper finds across your solution and quickly improve the quality of your code.
• Upgrade-to-LINQ Actions
  With C# 3.0 and LINQ, developers are able to write data-intensive code more easily by directly describing their intent to the compiler. However, years of imperative programming left us with tons of foreach-style code waiting to be upgraded. ReSharper 5 detects parts of your code that can be rewritten using the new LINQ syntax and offers to perform the conversion automatically, to make the developer’s intent crystal clear.
  
• Use IEnumerable Where Possible
  With the power of LINQ, IEnumerable is more than enough to pass a collection of values. So why restrict yourself with an API requiring you to pass old-school arrays, Lists and ArrayLists? ReSharper will scan your code base to detect methods that can safely return and accept IEnumerable instead of a more specific type. Of course, we will also take care of the conversion.
• New and Improved Code Inspections
  We have collected rich customer feedback and went through a list of common errors that developers make in code. Based on that, we have added a ton of highly intelligent inspections to immediately boost your .NET expertise. For example, if you take your API seriously and want it to be well documented, ReSharper will help you by highlighting errors in XML comments.

Other improvements

• Native NUnit Support
  ReSharper 5 introduces a completely new approach to running your NUnit tests. Our engine is now based on native NUnit code. What it means to you is 100% compatibility with the latest released version of NUnit and full support of its recent unit testing features.
• XML Formatting
  XML data is an important part of modern applications and you want it to be in order. The new version of ReSharper is supplied with a superb configurable formatter for XML files.

Did you miss us?!

We’ve got some good news for you .NET junkies!

ReSharper 5.0 is getting ready for some publicity. We’ve already started providing internal 5.0 builds to our beloved JetBrains Academy experts for some initial feedback. Next step: make builds mature enough to open public EAP, and we’re looking to get that far before end of month.

You can also expect us to post a public R# 5.0 Roadmap shortly. Meanwhile, here are the four major areas that ReSharper 5.0 focuses on:

1. Web Development. Web developers have long been asking for top-class support, so we’re starting to deliver on the promise with a pack of features for HTML, ASP.NET, and ASP.NET MVC.
2. Project and Team. This is a valuable addition for developers having to explore much unfamiliar code and/or perform batch modifications in large-scale projects. With access to and navigation within external sources, structured patterns for searching and customizing code, and location/namespace synchronization tools working in batch mode, you can handle your colossal solutions easier.
3. Code Analysis. In addition to fresh code inspections, ReSharper 5.0 presents multiple functional style “enumeration to LINQ” transformations, accepts warnings and suggestions into the “Errors in Solution” tool window, and introduces two major features to track what’s going on with your calls and data throughout application execution.
4. Visual Studio 2010 and Tools. We’re on the run to support Visual Studio 2010 earlier than ever. More info on that when VS2010 Beta2 comes out. Of course, Visual Studio 2008 is supported as well.

Last but not least, we have prepared a number of introductory, feature-specific blog posts for you to feel the flavor of the new version. Stay tuned!