JetBrains .NET Tools Blog

In an irrepressible pursuit of deadly perfection, we’re releasing ReSharper Beta 2 today! Committed to sim-ship ReSharper 5.0 with Visual Studio 2010, we’ve fixed a ton of issues, from minors to show-stoppers. Here are some of the most conspicuous:

• Support for Visual Studio 2010 RC. This inevitably means that R# 5 Beta 2 is not compatible with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. If for any reason you need ReSharper to be compatible with VS 2010 Beta 2, download build 1611 or earlier from ReSharper Nightly Builds.
• Extended ASP.NET MVC functionality. ReSharper 5.0 Beta 2 supports ASP.NET MVC 2 Areas — like so:
  
  Other notable improvements include creating MVC View pages and user controls with or without master pages right from usage.
• Stable Structural Search and Replace. SSR is now actually working working in a much more stable fashion than late last year, when we released Beta 1. That means, if you know about a code smell that ReSharper is unaware of, no problem! Create a search/replace pattern:
  
  and execute it! You can also set a severity level for the pattern so that ReSharper highlights code matching the search pattern as a hint, suggestion, warning, or error, and provides quick-fixes:
  
  By the way, you can now share your patterns with fellow developers by importing/exporting them as XML files.
• Multiple usability improvements. Usability improvements in ReSharper 5.0 Beta 2 affect many features, including the aforementioned Structural Search and Replace; Localization feature pack (by the way, have you seen Hadi Hariri’s Localizing Your Applications with ReSharper 5 screencast? you should!) and Solution-Wide Warnings and Suggestions that you can now launch not only from the Solution Explorer but from ReSharper menu as well:
  

Download ReSharper Beta 2 now and remember that all new and upgrade licenses purchased since October 15, 2009 qualify for a free upgrade to ReSharper 5.0!

If you haven’t yet upgraded to ReSharper 4.5, right now could be the time to do so - and enjoy the new ReSharper 5.0 for free when it comes out later this spring.

Over the years, ReSharper has gradually advanced from plainly highlighting errors and problems in individual code files to somehow summing up errors and problems in a larger scope, up to the entire solution.

Back in 2007, ReSharper 3.1 was the first product version to introduce Solution-Wide Error Analysis to gather data on all errors in the solution using a single tool window. ReSharper 4.5 split many code inspections to execute in private and public scope, with the latter only available when you turned on Solution-Wide Error Analysis.

Taking another huge step towards instantly seeing every problem anywhere in your solution, ReSharper 5 introduces a new code analysis feature called Solution-Wide Warnings and Suggestions. As you’ve probably guessed, it lists all warnings and suggestions that ReSharper displays in the scope of your whole solution or in a narrower scope, depending on how you call it. In other words, any code smells or other problems that you may have in your solution can now be summarized in a single tool window, making tool-based code review much easier.

When you switch on Solution-Wide Errors Analysis, Solution-Wide Warnings and Suggestions starts showing errors as well, plus warnings and suggestions that work in non-private scope.

That doesn’t mean Errors in Solution tool window becomes obsolete with R# 5: when your goal is as simple as to make your code compile, Errors in Solution quickly indicates that something in the solution went awfully wrong and you should fix things up before you can compile.

However, as soon as you’re ambitious enough to make your code green - that is, eliminate compiler warnings, implement best practices, or upgrade your code to leverage the latest language opportunities - Solution-Wide Warnings and Suggestions is exactly what you need to get the job done quickly.

The feature includes two items:

• Inspect Code - a new command that is available by right-clicking any node in Solution Explorer, from a single file to the whole solution:
  
• Inspection Results - a tool window that actually shows problems found in a certain scope, broken up into several categories:
  

The Inspection Results tool window is pretty much similar to other ReSharper tool windows like Type Hierarchy or Find Results: it provides common navigation, grouping and export options. It also has a code preview pane where you can instantly see the context of a problem without opening the corresponding file in the text editor:

The tool window is not updated automatically, so as soon as you’ve made substantial changes, make sure to click the Refresh button to see up-to-date inspection results:

In many scenarios, chances are you don’t want to review all code problems you may have in a scope - you’d rather focus on a particular subset. Inspection Results lets you do this by clicking the glaring Filter button:

This displays the Filter Issues dialog box where you can select or unselect individual inspections or even entire inspection groups. For example, here’s how you can discover code that can be transformed to leverage C# 3.0 and C# 4.0 language features:

When you double-click an item in Inspection Results, the corresponding file opens in the text editor in the right position for you to actually take measures: apply a quick-fix, refactor or clean up code, or whatever:

However, instead of double-clicking through all inspections, in many cases you can apply fixes right from Inspection Results: say, you’re inspecting a single file that has three inspection items:

Of the three inspection items, two can be safely fixed using Code Cleanup, which can both delete a redundant “using” directive and make an explicitly typed variable implicitly typed. Then, you press Ctrl+Alt+F right on one of these two inspection items, and the Code Cleanup dialog box displays:

You launch Code Cleanup with Full Cleanup profile, and ReSharper applies fixes for both inspections straight away! Upon refreshing Inspection Results, you only have one inspection left:

In addition to cleaning up code, you can also apply refactorings and navigation actions right from Inspection Results. I hope to cover scenarios involving this approach in subsequent posts about ReSharper 5.

To try out Solution-Wide Warnings and Inspections in its latest incarnation, make sure to download a fresh ReSharper 5 nightly build!

Download ReSharper 5.0 Beta while it’s hot!

ReSharper 5.0 introduces a great web development feature set; code analysis extended with call tracking, value tracking, and foreach-to-LINQ transformations; project-level refactorings; and a lot more enjoyable features. You can learn what’s new in greater detail at the ReSharper web site.

ReSharper 5.0 Beta integrates into both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010, so if you’re using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and you’re missing ReSharper goodness, now is a good time to give ReSharper 5 a try.

However, keep in mind that Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 has a number of known issues that in certain scenarios prevent ReSharper from working well. Don’t worry too much though: it doesn’t mean your Visual Studio crashes every time you press Alt+Enter! JetBrains and Microsoft engineers are aware of the problems and working together to solve them by the time Visual Studio 2010 goes RTM.

By the way, ReSharper in Visual Studio 2010 introduces a pack of special text editor integration features including a new animated error stripe and alpha-blended gray code that lets you see ReSharper highlighting even in code that ReSharper marks as unreachable:

Since this is a beta release, we desperately need your feedback. Please file any bugs that you may encounter to ReSharper issue tracker, and otherwise let us know how you feel using the new ReSharper in your Visual Studio.

Download and enjoy!

On the eve of ReSharper 5.0 going beta, we thought it’s just about time to start elaborating on new R# features. We’re hoping for a series of posts on improved code analysis, navigation to and within external sources, structural search & replace, ASP.NET support, and other stunning capabilities that ReSharper 5.0 provides. Today, we’ll talk about R# going crazy over LINQ.

Among many new code inspections introduced in ReSharper 5.0, two are specifically aimed at converting for and foreach loops into LINQ statements and/or combinations of extension methods and lambda expressions. Here they are:

• Loop can be converted into LINQ-expression
• Part of loop’s body can be converted into LINQ-expression

If you are wondering why you would ever transform traditional cozy loops to LINQ, Jimmy Bogard, Matthew Podwysocki, and Justin Etheredge have done a great job of explaining why.

Back to ReSharper work, let’s see how it converts loops to LINQ method or query syntax for you in common scenarios.

First, there’s the aggregation scenario where we loop through a collection in order to get the number of this collection’s items for which a certain condition holds true:

ReSharper highlights the foreach keyword with a green curly underline. You press Alt+Enter for available actions, and ReSharper suggests that you convert the loop to a LINQ expression:

You apply the conversion, and here we go: no more temporary counter variable. Instead, we’ve got Count extension method with a lambda-styled condition:

Next, we’re taking on the transformation scenario where we’re looping though a collection to populate another collection:

Again, ReSharper is smart enough to see that the code fragment can be converted to LINQ method syntax:

On the output side, we’ve got one line of code instead of three, thanks to the ToDictionary extension method:

For the next scenario, let’s take a collection and filter it out, so to speak, like this:

ReSharper encounters three foreach loops and readily suggests that we convert each of them. Because conversion only occurs within a selected loop and its nested loops, let’s press Alt+Enter at the top-level loop:

What we’ve got here is a pretty return statement that leverages LINQ query syntax:

All three examples above show how ReSharper converts entire loops to LINQ. In many cases, specifically with write usages inside loops, that can’t be done. For such occasions, ReSharper provides its second LINQ-related inspection: Part of loop’s body can be converted into LINQ-expression. Unlike the previous action, it’s displayed as a hint and highlighted with a straight green underline.

Let’s take another foreach loop with a complex condition and a write usage inside:

Pressing Alt+Enter at the foreach keyword highlighted as a hint lets you convert a part of the loop to LINQ syntax:

ReSharper integrates the condition with iteration variable definition, resulting in a LINQ query that makes the previously bloated write usage clear:

If, for any reason, you want to keep your loops for future generations and you don’t need LINQ-related code inspections, or, say, you want them to display as warnings or even errors, you can always configure them by choosing ReSharper | Options | Code Inspection | Severity.

The two loop 2 LINQ inspections and many more exciting features are available right now: we keep publishing fresh ReSharper 5 nightly builds that you can download and evaluate.

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!

If you have recently reported bugs to the dotTrace team, you should have noticed that it’s done with a new issue tracker developed by JetBrains, YouTrack (previously code-named Charisma).

Today is a serious milestone for YouTrack as it goes beta.

You can read more about YouTrack features in its own section at the JetBrains web site, watch demos, and download the beta version.

In addition, YouTrack has its own blog where you can get latest updates on the development process.

You can report bugs and request new features at YouTrack’s own instance.

YouTrack 1.0 public release is scheduled by the end of 2009.

Develop and track with pleasure!

Scientists hypothesize on the existence of ReSharper for Visual Studio 2010. They argue pros and cons endlessly, bringing history to the table, and even gamble around the odds of ReSharper running in the new shining Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1.

You can know for sure, it does run! Want to know when it will be running for you? Read on!

See how the new Extension Manager happily shows ReSharper as an installed extension, making it a first class citizen in the new Visual Studio shell.

Here, our well-known ReSharper tool windows are shown participating in the improved Visual Studio docking system.

Can you see those unit tests running? Of course not, it’s a screenshot. But rest assured that development pleasure-inducing bits are being cooked up in large integration ovens here at JetBrains.

Next to integration ovens, there is a high-tech lab where die-hard developers in white coats are implanting smartness into ReSharper’s understanding of C# 4. Variance and dynamic, optional parameters and named arguments - all the features of the new C# version are being mercilessly stuffed inside the most intelligent add-in for Visual Studio. Developers perform their cruel experiments with Visual Studio 2008, writing C# 4 code where only the previous version of the language is meant to be used.

Now, you might want to know when all the intelligence of ReSharper will be available for Visual Studio 2010. No need to wait for ReSharper 5.0 to come out! We plan to release preview bits compatible with Visual Studio 2010 for you to play and test in June, and June is just around the corner!

We have recently crossed the bounds of our specialization to set a world record in data transfer rate by throwing a 450GB file from one machine to another in only 1 minute! It was surprisingly easy: all we had to do was find a fast-running developer and equip the guy with an HDD!
Fake world records aside, only 4 months since our previous milestone, we’ve collected and successfully opened a 450GB snapshot. We mean it. Anyone ever seen a .NET profiler lifting that much weight?