Tamir Khason - Just code » My tools

Bootstrapper for .NET framework version detector

Tamir — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:22:26 +0000

You wrote your .NET program, that can be used as stand alone portable application (such as it should be for Smart Client Apps), however you have to be sure, that necessary prerequisites (such as .NET framework) are installed on client’s machine. What to do? How to detect .NET framework version installed on target machine before running .NET application. The answer is – to use unmanaged C++ bootstrapper, that invoke your application if correct version of framework is installed.

Until now there are 15 possible .NET frameworks can be installed on client’s machine. Here the table of possible and official supported versions, as appears in Q318785

.NET version	Actual version
3.5 SP1	3.5.30729.1
3.5	3.5.21022.8
3.0 SP2	3.0.4506.2152
3.0 SP1	3.0.4506.648
3.0	3.0.4506.30
2.0 SP2	2.0.50727.3053
2.0 SP1	2.0.50727.1433
2.0	2.0.50727.42
1.1 SP1	1.1.4322.2032
1.1 SP1 (in 32 bit version of Windows 2003)	1.1.4322.2300
1.1	1.1.4322.573
1.0 SP3	1.0.3705.6018
1.0 SP2	1.0.3705.288
1.0 SP1	1.0.3705.209
1.0	1.0.3705.0

All of those versions are detectible by queering specific registry keys. However, in some cases, you need to load mscoree.dll and call “GETCOREVERSION” API to determine whether specific version of .NET is installed. You can read more about it in MSDN.

So it’s really simple to write small C++ application (or PowerShell applet), that queries registry and invoke your managed application. How to do this? You can either read about it in outstanding blog of Aaron Stebner, who is Project Manager in XNA platform deployment team or attend my session next week to learn do it yourself. We’ll speak about nifty ways to do it also.

Anyway, by now, you can use small stand alone program, I wrote a while ago, that will tell you all versions of .NET frameworks installed in target machine without any prerequisites. It can be run even from shared network location

Download whoooot.exe (13K) >>

See you next week.

PS: Do not forget to download and install the new version of Visual Studio Snippet Designer, which is extremely useful tool by MVP Bill McCarthy, you’ll need it later next week…

Have a nice day and be good people.

Making TFS better or what is TITS?

Tamir — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:42:07 +0000

Those days me and my team work very hard toward new version of “The System”. This includes massive refactoring of all solutions, hard work with TFS (which not restricted to only adding files, but also deleting, moving, etc. other words, all stuff, which TFS is not really love). Because of this, we need a bunch of handy tools to make our dreams come true and to decrease unnecessary number of clicks inside Team System Explorer and Visual Studio. You do not really think, that we have no tools to make our everyday job easier. We have. However, we never package and release it. Let me introduce “TITS” – Tools, Invaluable for Team System. This suite I’m planning to release as another open source project within couple of months.

What “TITS” includes? First of all –

“QOF” – Quick Open File

This tools is absolutely invaluable if you have big solutions. While all it knows to do is to search. But, wait, what’s wrong with build-in search of Visual Studio? First of all, it does not search Solution items and files, are in solution directory, but not in project. Also it cannot fix your typos and errors. Also it does not know to move you quickly to found solution item in Solution Explorer or in Source Editor.

Basic set of QOF features:

No mouse – open any file
No mouse – locate any file in solution explorer
Highlighting found items
Multiple files open
Filter by source files only, resources, owner or any other kind of filters
Search inside TFS, including history, changesets, shelves (either private and public)
…and much much more

Next tool is:

“WIBREW” – Who Is Breaking What

Absolutely invaluable tool to know who actually breaking what file inside TFS. For example, I do not want to lock files, while I still want to know who holds what file. TFS provides such feature out-of-the-box, however from command prompt only. You can add it even as macro. Like this:

However it not user friendly and impossible for use, ‘cos it looks as following:

You do not know what actually developer doing, where and why. With “WIBREW”, you can know:

When developer started to break files
What exactly he’s doing
Is the breaking file locked or now
Where the developer breaks it (workspace and computer name of the user)
…and much much more

Another tool is:

“WITCH” – What I have To Check-in

If you ever worked with Team Force, you know what this tool is doing. It shows you a preview of all changed files, you’ll check-in. For some reason, TFS has no such feature. Let’s imagine, that your work method is to check out everything, change something and check-in only changed files. Until here TFS does everything, however if you want to preview changeset (for example in order to compare with “WIBREW” output), you can not. Here “WITCH” comes to help.

[Here should be a screenshot of “WITCH”, but it looks exactly the same as “WIBREW” with shameless blurring]

Another invaluable tool is:

“VOCUS” – VOid CUstom Settings for check in

This tool is absolutely UI-less. It allows developers to work with their own custom settings in Visual Studio, while for check-in and check-out it format all documents, according predefined custom settings (for example indentation). How many times, you tried to merge files, when all the difference is indentation it tab size? Well, this tool solves this problem.

It stores custom settings for each user (BTW, it also makes able for each developer to restore his settings fluently in any computer) and reformat documents on check-in action toward corporate settings, when on check-out toward custom developer’s setting.

“SHMOC” – SHow MOre Code

This is not actually tool, works with TFS. It rather works with your Visual Studio Development Environment. It’s UI-less as well and makes able to hide and restore all docking windows in VS. It makes you able to write in “Dark Room” mode (which is full screen, distraction free environment) and return to Visual Studio within one button press. It can also change VS color scheme, if required.

There are some other tools should be inside this suite, however, I still have no names for them Also, if you have something interesting, and you want to contribute it to this suite, you’re highly welcome.

PS: This blog is about code, but this post is 6th in row without even one line of code, so I have to fix it as soon as possible. Thus, I’ll example how WIBREW works under the hood. Other words, small example of how to work with TFS API from Visual Studio plugin.

First of all, as in any VS plugin, you need to acquire DTE2 application object:

_applicationObject = (DTE2)application;
_addInInstance = (AddIn)addInInst;

When you have it, you need to detect what TFS server you’re working with and what are user credentials for this session. The common problem of WIBREW for poor men, was how to work with this tool over VPN (when your connected session is only inside VS). So each time, you tried to run it, you had to enter your domain credentials – very inconvenience way of work.

In order to prevent it, let’s ask your environment about Team Foundation information:

private TeamFoundationServerExt _tfsExt;
…
_tfsExt = (TeamFoundationServerExt)_applicationObject.GetObject("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationServerExt");

Also, you can be notified when your work project context was changed. To do this, just subscribe to ProjectContextChanged event and handle it inside:

_tfsExt.ProjectContextChanged += OnProjectContextChanged;
…
public void OnProjectContextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) {
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_tfsExt.ActiveProjectContext.ProjectName)) {

Now when we know, that we have out active project context, all we have to do is to ask about changes

private VersionControlExt _vcExt;
…
_vcExt = (VersionControlExt)_applicationObject.GetObject("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.VersionControlExt");

Inside VersionControlExt object you have following self-descriptive properties and methods: FindChangeSet, History, PendingChanges, SolutionWorkspace etc. however it works only with TFS solution explorer. To handle pending changes for the project without tickling TFS, we can use it internal methods. All the difference is with references. To work with Visual Studio TFS explorer methods, you should reference:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.dll, Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.dll, while working with TFS API directly, use Microsoft.TeamFoundation.dll, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.dll from [PROGRAM FILES]\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\. Just like this:

VersionControlServer _vcs…_vcs = (VersionControlServer)_server.GetService(typeof(VersionControlServer));…var _sets = _vcs.QueryPendingSets( new[] { new ItemSpec(serverPath, RecursionType.Full) }, null, null);…foreach (PendingSet set in sets) {…
//Get everything you need here

We done. It’s very easy to work with Team System from inside Visual Studio. Also it’s very easy to build useful tools, not built by Microsoft for some reason

Have a nice day, be good people and wait for me to beatify sources before releasing as another Open Source application.

TFS licensing model demystification or what should I buy for my company in order not to step on the licensing mine?

USB FM radio library was published on CodePlex

Tamir — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:48:30 +0000

I just published a part of my latest project – dynamic library to work with FM receivers on CodePlex under MS-PL. So, feel free do download, test and use it.

Note, that this release is preliminary and has a lot of bugs. Also, RDS is not fully implements as well as recording capabilities with Direct Sound.

I’m keep working to provide WPF UI for this library to “productize” it.

So, what are you waiting for? Download and Spear the word with this news! This is the first and only fully managed library (as far as I know) to work with RDS, TMC and FM data. Also, there are not a lot of information about HID usage as FM receiver in managed code.

Download latest release of USBFM.DLL >>

Quick IT tip: How to build bootable USB stick

Issues, you reported were fixed

Tamir — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:35:46 +0000

Hi, folks. And thank you for reporting issues with WpfPerf Performance Profiling tool. Now it was fixed, so, download and use new and fixed version.

Keep reporting, as you can see, you have the power to change!

Imaginary by Malcolm Dare

For all those, who have problems with running WPF Performance Profiling tool – Microsoft cares

Tamir — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:00:50 +0000

Three days ago, I announced the new release of WPF Performance Profiling Tool. A couple hours after this was announced, I got a number of comments from you, readers. It was about issues with running this tool. I checked the issue and forwarded it to development team from Microsoft. The problem was in bad parsing of comma and point characters in this tool, when using it on non-US locale. Dev team took care about it and hopefully they will provide a fix soon.

Thank you for reading my blog, reporting and your awareness of such issues. This is very important to me and I’m really appreciate your efforts to help us to develop WPF community.

I’ll update you as soon as the patch will be available.

Thank you and Shana Tova!

Real singleton approach in WPF application

The new version of WPF Performance Profiling Tool is available for download

Tamir — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:07:34 +0000

Finally, after a long time of silence, the new version of WPF Performance Profiling Tool is available for download for x32 and x64 OSs. So, what’s new there?

Ton of UI improvements for Visual Profiler

New search function to quick find elements in visual tree

Hot path (critical path) of CPU usage aside with CPU usage for single element

Configuration of tint for overlay windows

Live preview, ability to split columns, slider of graph duration, expanders to have cleaner screen and much much more

Perforator also got new UI and has history now.

There is new tool, named String allocation profiler

This tool is very useful for viewing and managing strings inside your application (another step toward normal localization support for WPF? Probably)

There are also some improvements in Event tracing tool. Select process for example

And much much more. Great thank to Josef and his team for this great work

Download the new version of WPF Performance Profiling Tool >>

Visual Studio snippet designer

Tamir — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:48:12 +0000

Chicks love CodePlex as well as Microsoft loves it too and today they release extremely useful tool, that was internal for more, then three years. It named: “Visual Studio Snippet Designer”.

As you can, probably, understand. This tools is used to create and manage VS time savers – snippet files (introduced in VS2005)

This is great tool, that will help you a lot to save your time during regular everyday development. Any other word is unnecessary. Download, install and use it!

.NET 3.5 SP1 is RTM and available for download

Tamir — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:12:48 +0000

For all those who asked, .NET 3.5 SP1 is final and available for download. What’s inside?

ASP.NET Dynamic data
Core improvements for CLR
A lot of performance improvements in WPF
ClickOnce enhancements
ADO.NET with Data Services and Entity Framework
LINQ2SQL and Data Provider for SQL Server 2008, that was released last week
WCF with easier DataContract serialization

Download it with Web Installation or as Full Package

For more information, please see Read Me and KB about .NET 3.5 SP1 RTM. If you faced with any issue, please provide us with feedback via MS Connect

Arabic and Hebrew languages bidirectional support for Silverlight 2.0 beta 2

Tamir — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:27:00 +0000

Those days, I’m, together with guys from Microsoft Egypt and Santeon, finishing development of bidirectional input and output support for Silverlight. I want you to take part in alpha testing of this solution. Please see the test form here and try it.

<noframes>Visit <a href=”http://khason.net/blog/arabic-and-hebrew-languages-bidirectional-support-for-silverlight-20-beta-2/”>original article</a> to test</noframes>

Also, you can download latest development build or compiled binary version with debug symbols and try it yourself. Please, if you’re in any issue, report it, by using issue tracker in CodePlex.

In order to use it, all you have to do is to use custom namespace within your project and then, you’ll be able to get almost all controls, you know, but with Arabic and Hebrew RTL and LTR support. You have to set one property: FlowDirection to change the rendering method (exactly as in WPF). Here an example of usage.

    xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
    xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”
    xmlns:l=”clr-namespace:System.Windows.BidiControls;assembly=BidiControls”>
…

That’s all. Thank you for your cooperation.

Mobile version of this blog

Tamir — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:00:00 +0000

10x to great service of mofuse, I have mobile version of this blog now. So bookmark it: http://m.0×15.net/

Here the QR code for your convenience