We had our first booth at BASTA! Autumn last week and we were very glad to take part in the conference. A lot of great interaction with the audience and a chance to talk to both new and existing users of our products. As those of you that were there know, we raffled out 30 licenses at the conference!
If you’re not one of the lucky winners, you still have one more chance to win. Among all those that filled out the Prize drawing cards, we have selected three winners (who chose their own products):
And the lucky winners are…..
Raimund Keese - dotTrace [Update: Has already won a license at Raffle on-site]
Steffen Hamman - dotTrace [New Winner since Raimund was picked already]
Alexander Polischuk - ReSharper
Kai Moosburger - ReSharper
Congratulations. Your license will be on it’s way in the next few days!
See you at the next conference (and if you happen to be at FOWA in London, stop by and say Hello!)
We have several dotCover-related news items this time: what’s new in dotCover 1.2; how dotCover is going to evolve mid-term, and how to make sure you’re eligible for subsequent dotCover versions.
dotCover 1.2 EAP
First of all, we have recently started Early Access Program for dotCover 1.2. This is a maintenance release that could be of interest to those of you who are using dotCover with massive solutions and experiencing performance and memory issues.
Improved performance of report generation and coverage highlighting. This doesn’t have anything to do with creating a snapshot but rather with its further processing. We have clocked moderate performance improvements in generating reports for ReSharper solution. We’d be happy to know whether this also gets things smoother for you if you’re using dotCover on large solutions.
Reduced HTML report size: both in Visual Studio and in the console runner. Specifically, we have managed to reduce the size of ReSharper report 1.5 times, making it 10 Mb lighter.
Reduced memory consumption during snapshot merge. This is based on internal feedback but may very well make life easier for everyone who has ever encountered OutOfMemory exceptions on merging snapshots.
Miscellaneous bug fixes and minor improvements: see this YouTrack query for complete release notes.
One more thing about this EAP is that it’s prepared to support ReSharper 6.1 that we’ll hopefully make available for early access in two weeks’ time.
dotCover Subscription Renewal Licenses Available
It’s now been a year since dotCover 1.0 was released, and since a dotCover license includes one year of free upgrades, the free upgrade period has just expired for some dotCover users. If you’re using a recent dotCover version and there’s a “license not acceptable” message in your dotCover License Information dialog box, that means you’re no longer eligible for free upgrades:
If you would like to be able to upgrade to forthcoming versions of dotCover (see below for some of the reasons why you’d love to) for another year, you should purchase a 1-year upgrade subscription renewal license, which is worth (roughly) 50% of the current initial license price — that is, $75 or equivalent for commercial license upgrade subscription renewal, and $39 or equivalent for personal license upgrade subscription renewal.
To renew your upgrade subscription, refer to one of the two e-mail reminders that we’re sending out when a subscription is going to end soon, and as soon as it has ended. If you haven’t received any reminder e-mails, please go to dotCover buy page and use the new “Upgrade subscription renewal” license option in either “Commercial license” or “Personal license” column:
You will hardly want to purchase any upgrade subscriptions without knowing in which directions the product is going to evolve. Here’s a quick roadmap highlighting features that we’re going to make available in new releases during the year ahead:
Running and measuring coverage of unit tests without ReSharper. Current versions of dotCover rely heavily on ReSharper unit test runner (and its framework-specific plug-ins) for running and measuring coverage of unit tests. You just can’t execute unit test coverage without integrating dotCover into ReSharper. This isn’t a problem for ReSharper users but there’s no way to reach a wider audience until dotCover provides its own test runner — and it will do so! Unit test runner, currently ReSharper’s exclusive asset, will soon be available in both ReSharper and dotCover, making unit test coverage possible without ReSharper’s assistance.
More built-in navigation. ReSharper provides more than unit test runner to dotCover: certain navigation actions in dotCover are only available if ReSharper is installed in Visual Studio. For example, you can’t currently navigate from Coverage Results Browser to Visual Studio text editor using the keyboard: this is only possible from the Coverage tab in ReSharper’s Unit Test Sessions. Inconveniences like this will also be removed as dotCover gains more intelligence from ReSharper.
Priority coverage suggestions. We’ll train dotCover to gather metrics such as cyclomatic complexity in order to suggest which parts of your code base should be covered with unit tests in the first place — thus evolving from formal coverage statistics to a more insightful and task-efficient approach.
Coverage filtering by attributes. dotCover will enable you to create attribute filters. It will skip measuring coverage of code marked with attributes you’re listed. This will help prevent wasting time on measuring coverage of auto-generated code and any other kinds of code that you don’t want dotCover to process. In configuring filters, you’ll be able to use both common attributes like GeneratedCode or MSTest’s ExcludeFromCodeCoverageAttribute, and any other attributes used on assembly, method, or class level.
This is not all features that we’d like to implement in near future — rather, those that we’re confident in being able to bring to life. On the other hand, we don’t have an ultimate list of expected changes, and as usual, you can throw your suggestions via dotCover issue tracker or discussion forum, and we’ll take your input into account as we schedule our development process.
JetBrains will be exhibiting at BASTA!, one of the longest running and key .NET conferences in Europe. BASTA! Autumn which is held in the city of Mainz (with the conference venue overlooking the river), will take place from the 26th to the 30th of September.
Stop by our booth and see what we have in store with upcoming versions of our tools! Grab a T-Shirt, have a chat!
Test Driven Development is easy. You write a test, then you write the code. Seems simple enough, yet it normally is not, and when you’re just getting started, you often make mistakes. It doesn’t matter how many times you read the steps or follow a course, as a novice you are still unsure whether you’re doing it right or wrong.
It would be great if somehow, there was someone constantly monitoring you and telling you whether you’re taking the right steps. Whether you are refactoring when you should, whether you are making tests fail before they pass. It would not only help newbies, but also help some of us to be a bit more disciplined. Up to now, this kind of monitoring was really only viable while having an instructor next to you. However, that has changed.
Industrial Logic, founded by Joshua Kerievsky, author of the well-known book on Refactoring to Patterns (highly recommended) have courseware on topics such as design, code smells, refactoring and test driven development. The difference with these courses however is that apart from being interactive and providing exercises, they also monitor how you perform these exercises by using a neat little plug-in for ReSharper that they’ve developed.
How it works
When you sign up for a course that involves exercises, such as their TDD course, you are prompted to install a ReSharper Recording plug-in:
Once this plug-in is installed, it will then automatically start recording any exercises you do. In the case of the TDD course, these exercises are designed to show you the flow of TDD: Red, Green, Refactor. It gives you a brief description of the required code to write and starts you off with a blank test. The one below for instance is to calculate bonuses:
Once you complete the exercise, you then upload a file. This file is the recording that the ReSharper plug-in has made. It includes information such as compiler errors, warning, the refactoring steps you’ve made, and a whole bunch of other useful information. Once this file is uploaded, it is analyzed and results are produced for you:
This graph indicates the portion of time that your code had errors, the amount of time with failing and passing tests as well as the actual phases. Every dot on the graph also provides detailed information about the event, along with a score.
These scores are determined by the activities that take place:
For instance, here we see that we performed a refactoring while having compilation issues, giving us a score of 0, or performing another refactoring before tests are run, resulting in a –1. These events all add up along with other factors to give you an overall score:
It doesn’t end there
The great thing about this however is that it doesn’t end with your score. As I mentioned, this course is fully interactive, which means that not only can you interact with instructors, but also other alumni, via in-place forums. For instance, below is a screenshot of a question that is asked after the exercise. It includes not only your response, but the percentage of the overall responses from other students along with open discussions from instructors and alumni:
This kind of interaction is invaluable. Not only do you have a monitor recording your steps, but you can also discuss issues you encounter or doubts you have throughout the course. What is also great is that all the mentors and instructors of Industrial Logic make it clear that there is no absolute truth. Every response, every comment, is always with the utmost respect and given from a personal experience perspective.
Watch it in action
The folks at Industrial Logic have put together a small video which shows how this works in action:
Beyond Exercises
This recorder is great for exercises and learning, but it doesn’t stop there. When signing up to their courseware, you are also provided the option to have the ability to record steps on live projects and have them analyzed (Sessions album). Think of the scenarios this could help with! Not only can you see for yourself if you are doing things in ways that can be improved, but it also allows you to teach and help junior developers on your team.
The TDD course as well as many of the other courses surrounding refactoring and code smells by Industrial Logic are of the highest quality. They have an extensive album (as they call it) of courses.
Special ReSharper 6.0 Recorder Launch offer
To celebrate the release of Industrial Logic’s Recorder for Resharper 6.0, they are offering a 30% discount on the purchase of one of the following albums:
To obtain this special offer, please use the following discount code when ordering your album: ILRECORDER60. Please note that this code is valid until the 30th of September, 2011.
JetBrains will be exhibiting at Microsoft’s upcoming // BUILD conference. Like everyone else attending, we’re also eagerly awaiting to see what Microsoft has in store for us.
We will also be showing some new things at our booth and support for the latest technologies, both for Web Development as well as Rich client development such as XAML. So make sure to stop by, say hello and pick up a T-Shirt (Yep, we’ll also have Dead Code ones).
See you there!
Update: Sorry guys, no t-shirts this time. Logistics failure. Still, you’re pretty much welcome to the booth for a chat with Hadi, Brian, and Slava: the guy who owns the live template subsystem in ReSharper.
Sometime ago, Pluralsight released a complete on-line course for mastering ReSharper, by James Kovacs, a long time ReSharper user, excellent trainer and JetBrains Academy Board Member. On the release of this course, Pluralsight were kind enough to offer 24 hour free access to this course.
Over the past few months, we have been working closely with the good folks at Pluralsight and we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement whereby all ReSharper license holders will now receive free access during an entire month to the ReSharper Fundamentals course.
We want to thank Aaron Skonard, James Kovacs and everyone at Pluralsight who have made this possible. This course is by far one of the fastest and most complete ways for mastering ReSharper and it is a great asset for all of our users.
If you are interested in getting free access to this course, please contact sales@jetbrains.com with your license information.
A few months ago, Scott Hanselman gave a session at TechEd US were he showed some new features we were working on for TeamCity, in order to provide first class support for NuGet. He later blogged about it here.
Instead of delaying until the next release of TeamCity, this feature (like many), has been developed as a plug-in. Eugene, who has been working on it, announced the availability of a first build a few weeks ago. After some initial trials and changes, I decided to setup YouTrackSharp to automate the publishing of the NuGet package. It was surprisingly easy as you’ll see.
1. Installing the Plug-in
If your project is running on TeamCity at Codebetter.com, you can skip to Step 3, since it’s already installed and configured. If not, then grab the latest build from our public TeamCity server. Place the zip file into the plugins folder of your TeamCity installation and restart the server.
2. Configuring the NuGet version
Once the server is running, and agents updated (automated procedure), you then need to tell TeamCity what NuGet version you want to use. The plug-in knows about the nuget.org feed to it can grab the latest version of the command line tool directly. Click on Administration | Server Configuration. If the plug-in installed correctly, you should now have a new Tab called NuGet:
Click on the “Install additional versions of the NuGet.exe Command Line”. TeamCity will read from the feed and display available versions to you in the dialog box. Select the version you want and click Install:
Pull, Pack, Publish
The plug-in offers three main operations:
Pulling NuGet packages required to build your project
Creating NuGet packages
Publishing Packages
In my case, I want to create the package and publish it. To give you a general idea of my build process, here’s the outline of the build steps:
The NuGet related steps are 3 and 4. Step 1 simply builds the project by building the solution file. Step 2 runs the MSpec tests.
3. Building the package
This step is for building the actual package. We create a new Build Step in our project and select NuGet Packages Pack. This will give us the following configuration screen:
As you can see, the configuration is pretty straightforward. Notice that in the Specification file, we can also provide a csproj file as opposed to a NuGet spec file. The advantage to this is that we do not have to redefine information such as version number and copyright information in the spec file. If you’re not familiar with this feature, check out David Ebbo’s post.
I’ve also checked the option to Include Sources and Symbols. This is also explained in David Ebbo’s post and it’s for publishing the sources to Symbolsource. Additional command line parameters (if required) can be passed in the Additional Commandline arguments. If you want to make this a release build, you can also do this by defining Configuration=Release in the Properties field.
Finally I’ve specified the Build number of the package using the TeamCity variable %build.number% which auto increments on each build, and is also used by another feature of TeamCity new in 6.5 which is called the AssemblyPatcher, which I’ll show you as the last step.
4. Publishing the package
The next step is to publish the package. As before, we need to add a Build Step and select NuGet Packages Publish.
This step is even easier to configure. By convention it uses nuget.org as the destination to publish the package. If you have your own NuGet server then fill in the address in the Packages Sources field. If you’re using nuget.org, leave it blank. You need to provide your API key which is stored in a password protected field and finally indicate which packages you want published. Here you can list each package individually or use wildcards. [Note: relative paths are allowed but at the time of writing this post, there was an issue and I was using the full path. This should be fixed soon].
If you want to publish to multiple sources, all you need to do is add another step. Note however that we did not have to specify an extra step to publish the sources to symbolsource.org. TeamCity will follow NuGet’s convention and do this for you automatically.
5. AssemblyInfo Patcher
Although this step is optional I recommend you use it. The AssemblyInfo Patcher is a new Build Feature added to TeamCity which temporarily patches all your projects AssemblyInfo.cs files to update the version number, and then reverts it back after the build is complete. This allows your build number, artifacts, packages and assemblies to all have the same version number. Adding this option is as simple as selecting it from the main project configuration screen:
That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. With a few simple build steps we have now fully automated packaging and publishing NuGet packages. As I mentioned initially, if you’ve got your project on CodeBetter, you already have this feature enabled. If you’re running your own server, just download the plugin and set it up. It’s very simple.
We have a lot of users in Australia, yet we’ve never managed to get out over there for a conference. That’s about to change. Next week, myself and Sergey Coox (ReSharper Project Manager) will be heading to the Gold Coast for TechEd Australia. We are sponsoring the event as well as having a booth present. It is going to be a great opportunity to see and talk first-hand to our users and also a personal chance to get to see (albeit very little) of Australia. We will ship a few hundred “I see dead code” T-Shirts also, so make sure to stop by the booth to pick yours up.
ReSharper Tips and Tricks Demo
We’ve managed to secure one whole hour at the Create Demo Booth that will be in the exhibit area to hold a ReSharper Tips and Tricks session, similar to those that have taken place at other conferences. This will take place on Thursday 1st of September 1 pm - 2 pm. It will be somewhere in the Exhibitor area. Pass by the booth during the week for more details.
As like last year, JetBrains is again a sponsor of Agile Conference and we will be exhibiting at this year’s event in Salt Lake City. Yegor (TeamCity), Maxim (YouTrack) and myself will be there for the entire week (August 8th-12th), showing some of the new features in our tools, as well as having a chance to interact with our users, which is one of the greatest things when attending conferences, talking to you and receiving your feedback.
Similar to all recent events, we are also using the opportunity to spend some time with customers on their premises, so if you are in and around Salt Lake City, be sure to let me know as soon as possible, if you are interested.
Finally, Daren Knopp has also been kind enough to set up a Nerd Dinner for Thursday August 11th seeing so many nerds are in town. RSVP here.
We are extremely happy to announce the release of the new ReSharper: please download ReSharper 6 right now.
With this new release, we have gone way and beyond merely providing new features. We have added support for not one but three new languages: JavaScript, CSS and HTML, plus ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor view engine, making ReSharper 6 and Visual Studio one of the best environments today for developing web applications. In addition we also have implemented code analysis for Visual Basic .NET.
The features however aren’t limited to just new language support. Earlier in the year, we announced our new decompiler, which is built in to the core of ReSharper 6, providing integrated decompiling inside Visual Studio. Built on the philosophy of external sources, ReSharper 6 facilitates navigation of source code, whether it belongs to our solution, the .NET framework or any third party library. We also announced the availability of a new free standalone decompiler tool, which is currently in Early Access Program.
ReSharper 6 also provides a wealth of rich features for all language lovers. From new in-place refactorings, to enhancements in navigation and unit testing, new code transformations, code inspections for C#, improved XAML support, ReSharper 6 provides something for everyone.
If you prefer watching over reading about the new features, here’s a fresh screencast for you:
We truly hope you enjoy this new release and know that we have already started working on the next version. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.
Last but not least, if you’re after regular tips and tricks on ReSharper and release cycle news, don’t forget to follow ReSharper on twitter.
