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• .NET Reflector Pro Coming…

  The very best software is almost always originally the creation of a single person. Readers of our 'Geek of the Week' will know of a few of them.  Even behemoths such as MS Word or Excel started out with one programmer.  There comes a time with any software that it starts to grow up, and has to move from this form of close parenting to being developed by a team.  This has happened several times within Red-Gate: SQL Refactor, SQL Compare, and SQL Dependency Tracker, not to mention SQL Backup, were all originally the work of a lone coder, who subsequently handed over the development to a structured team of programmers, test engineers and usability designers. Because we loved .NET Reflector when Lutz Roeder wrote and nurtured it, and, like many other .NET developers, used it as a development tool ourselves, .NET Reflector's progress from being the apple of Lutz's eye to being a Red-Gate team-based development  seemed natural.  Lutz, after all, eventually felt he couldn't afford the time to develop it to the extent it deserved. Why, then, did we want to take on .NET Reflector?  Different people may give you different answers, but for us in the .NET team, it just seemed a natural progression. We're always very surprised when anyone suggests that we want to change the nature of the tool since it seems right just as it is. .NET Reflector will stay very much the tool we all use and appreciate, although the new version will support .NET 4, and will have many improvements in the accuracy of its decompiling. Whilst we've made a lot of improvements to Reflector, the radical addition, which we hope you'll want to try out as well, is '.NET Reflector Pro'. This is an extension to .NET Reflector that allows the debugging of decompiled code using the Visual Studio debugger. It is an add-in, but we'll be charging for it, mainly because we prefer to live indoors with a warm meal, rather than outside in tents, particularly when the winter's been as cold as this one has. We're hoping (we're even pretty confident!) that you'll share our excitement about .NET Reflector Pro. .NET Reflector Pro integrates .NET Reflector into Visual Studio, allowing you to seamlessly debug into third-party code and assemblies, even if you don't have the source code for them. You can now treat decompiled assemblies much like your own code: you can step through them and use all the debugging techniques that you would use on your own code. Try the beta now. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• .NET Reflector Pro Coming…

  The very best software is almost always originally the creation of a single person. Readers of our 'Geek of the Week' will know of a few of them.  Even behemoths such as MS Word or Excel started out with one programmer.  There comes a time with any software that it starts to grow up, and has to move from this form of close parenting to being developed by a team.  This has happened several times within Red-Gate: SQL Refactor, SQL Compare, and SQL Dependency Tracker, not to mention SQL Backup, were all originally the work of a lone coder, who subsequently handed over the development to a structured team of programmers, test engineers and usability designers. Because we loved .NET Reflector when Lutz Roeder wrote and nurtured it, and, like many other .NET developers, used it as a development tool ourselves, .NET Reflector's progress from being the apple of Lutz's eye to being a Red-Gate team-based development  seemed natural.  Lutz, after all, eventually felt he couldn't afford the time to develop it to the extent it deserved. Why, then, did we want to take on .NET Reflector?  Different people may give you different answers, but for us in the .NET team, it just seemed a natural progression. We're always very surprised when anyone suggests that we want to change the nature of the tool since it seems right just as it is. .NET Reflector will stay very much the tool we all use and appreciate, although the new version will support .NET 4, and will have many improvements in the accuracy of its decompiling. Whilst we've made a lot of improvements to Reflector, the radical addition, which we hope you'll want to try out as well, is '.NET Reflector Pro'. This is an extension to .NET Reflector that allows the debugging of decompiled code using the Visual Studio debugger. It is an add-in, but we'll be charging for it, mainly because we prefer to live indoors with a warm meal, rather than outside in tents, particularly when the winter's been as cold as this one has. We're hoping (we're even pretty confident!) that you'll share our excitement about .NET Reflector Pro. .NET Reflector Pro integrates .NET Reflector into Visual Studio, allowing you to seamlessly debug into third-party code and assemblies, even if you don't have the source code for them. You can now treat decompiled assemblies much like your own code: you can step through them and use all the debugging techniques that you would use on your own code. Try the beta now. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

  - by Rick Strahl

  About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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• Unable to Create New Incidents in Dynamics CRM with Java and Axis2

  - by Lutz

  So I've been working on trying to figure this out, oddly when I ran it one machine I got a generic Axis Fault with no description, but now on another machine I'm getting a different error message, but I'm still stuck. Basically I'm just trying to do what I thought would be a fairly trivial task of creating a new incident in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 via a web services call. I started by downloading the XML from http://hostname/MSCrmServices/2007/CrmService.asmx and generating code from it using Axis2. Anyway, here's my program, any help would be greatly appreciated, as I've been stuck on this for way longer than I thought I'd be and I'm really out of ideas here. public class TestCRM { private static String endpointURL = "http://theHost/MSCrmServices/2007/CrmService.asmx"; private static String userName = "myUserNameHere"; private static String password = "myPasswordHere"; private static String host = "theHostname"; private static int port = 80; private static String domain = "theDomain"; private static String orgName = "theOrganization"; public static void main(String[] args) { CrmServiceStub stub; try { stub = new CrmServiceStub(endpointURL); setOptions(stub._getServiceClient().getOptions()); RetrieveMultipleDocument rmd = RetrieveMultipleDocument.Factory.newInstance(); com.microsoft.schemas.crm._2007.webservices.RetrieveMultipleDocument.RetrieveMultiple rm = com.microsoft.schemas.crm._2007.webservices.RetrieveMultipleDocument.RetrieveMultiple.Factory.newInstance(); QueryExpression query = QueryExpression.Factory.newInstance(); query.setColumnSet(AllColumns.Factory.newInstance()); query.setEntityName(EntityName.INCIDENT.toString()); rm.setQuery(query); rmd.setRetrieveMultiple(rm); TargetCreateIncident tinc = TargetCreateIncident.Factory.newInstance(); Incident inc = tinc.addNewIncident(); inc.setDescription("This is a test of ticket creation through a web services call."); CreateDocument cd = CreateDocument.Factory.newInstance(); Create create = Create.Factory.newInstance(); create.setEntity(inc); cd.setCreate(create); Incident test = (Incident)cd.getCreate().getEntity(); CrmAuthenticationTokenDocument catd = CrmAuthenticationTokenDocument.Factory.newInstance(); CrmAuthenticationToken token = CrmAuthenticationToken.Factory.newInstance(); token.setAuthenticationType(0); token.setOrganizationName(orgName); catd.setCrmAuthenticationToken(token); //The two printlns below spit back XML that looks okay to me? System.out.println(cd); System.out.println(catd); /* stuff that doesn't work */ CreateResponseDocument crd = stub.create(cd, catd, null, null); //this line throws the error CreateResponse cr = crd.getCreateResponse(); System.out.println("create result: " + cr.getCreateResult()); /* End stuff that doesn't work */ System.out.println(); System.out.println(); System.out.println(); boolean fetchNext = true; while(fetchNext){ RetrieveMultipleResponseDocument rmrd = stub.retrieveMultiple(rmd, catd, null, null); //This retrieve using the CRMAuthenticationToken catd works just fine RetrieveMultipleResponse rmr = rmrd.getRetrieveMultipleResponse(); BusinessEntityCollection bec = rmr.getRetrieveMultipleResult(); String pagingCookie = bec.getPagingCookie(); fetchNext = bec.getMoreRecords(); ArrayOfBusinessEntity aobe = bec.getBusinessEntities(); BusinessEntity[] myEntitiesAtLast = aobe.getBusinessEntityArray(); for(int i=0; i<myEntitiesAtLast.length; i++){ //cast to whatever you asked for... Incident myEntity = (Incident) myEntitiesAtLast[i]; System.out.println("["+(i+1)+"]: " + myEntity); } } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } private static void setOptions(Options options){ HttpTransportProperties.Authenticator auth = new HttpTransportProperties.Authenticator(); List authSchemes = new ArrayList(); authSchemes.add(HttpTransportProperties.Authenticator.NTLM); auth.setAuthSchemes(authSchemes); auth.setUsername(userName); auth.setPassword(password); auth.setHost(host); auth.setPort(port); auth.setDomain(domain); auth.setPreemptiveAuthentication(false); options.setProperty(HTTPConstants.AUTHENTICATE, auth); options.setProperty(HTTPConstants.REUSE_HTTP_CLIENT, "true"); } } Also, here's the error message I receive: org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxUnexpectedCharException: Unexpected character 'S' (code 83) in prolog; expected '<' at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1] at org.apache.axis2.AxisFault.makeFault(AxisFault.java:430) at org.apache.axis2.transport.TransportUtils.createSOAPMessage(TransportUtils.java:123) at org.apache.axis2.transport.TransportUtils.createSOAPMessage(TransportUtils.java:67) at org.apache.axis2.description.OutInAxisOperationClient.handleResponse(OutInAxisOperation.java:354) at org.apache.axis2.description.OutInAxisOperationClient.send(OutInAxisOperation.java:417) at org.apache.axis2.description.OutInAxisOperationClient.executeImpl(OutInAxisOperation.java:229) at org.apache.axis2.client.OperationClient.execute(OperationClient.java:165) at com.spanlink.crm.dynamics4.webservice.CrmServiceStub.create(CrmServiceStub.java:618) at com.spanlink.crm.dynamics4.runtime.TestCRM.main(TestCRM.java:82) Caused by: org.apache.axiom.om.OMException: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxUnexpectedCharException: Unexpected character 'S' (code 83) in prolog; expected '<' at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1] at org.apache.axiom.om.impl.builder.StAXOMBuilder.next(StAXOMBuilder.java:260) at org.apache.axiom.soap.impl.builder.StAXSOAPModelBuilder.getSOAPEnvelope(StAXSOAPModelBuilder.java:161) at org.apache.axiom.soap.impl.builder.StAXSOAPModelBuilder.<init>(StAXSOAPModelBuilder.java:110) at org.apache.axis2.builder.BuilderUtil.getSOAPBuilder(BuilderUtil.java:682) at org.apache.axis2.transport.TransportUtils.createDocumentElement(TransportUtils.java:215) at org.apache.axis2.transport.TransportUtils.createSOAPMessage(TransportUtils.java:145) at org.apache.axis2.transport.TransportUtils.createSOAPMessage(TransportUtils.java:108) ... 7 more Caused by: com.ctc.wstx.exc.WstxUnexpectedCharException: Unexpected character 'S' (code 83) in prolog; expected '<' at [row,col {unknown-source}]: [1,1] at com.ctc.wstx.sr.StreamScanner.throwUnexpectedChar(StreamScanner.java:623) at com.ctc.wstx.sr.BasicStreamReader.nextFromProlog(BasicStreamReader.java:2047) at com.ctc.wstx.sr.BasicStreamReader.next(BasicStreamReader.java:1069) at javax.xml.stream.util.StreamReaderDelegate.next(StreamReaderDelegate.java:60) at org.apache.axiom.om.impl.builder.SafeXMLStreamReader.next(SafeXMLStreamReader.java:183) at org.apache.axiom.om.impl.builder.StAXOMBuilder.parserNext(StAXOMBuilder.java:597) at org.apache.axiom.om.impl.builder.StAXOMBuilder.next(StAXOMBuilder.java:172) ... 13 more

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• Legal uses of setjmp and GCC

  - by Chris Lutz

  Using GCC (4.0 for me), is this legal: if(__builtin_expect(setjmp(buf) != 0, 1)) { // handle error } else { // do action } I found a discussion saying it caused a problem for GCC back in 2003, but I would imagine that they would have fixed it by now. The C standard says that it's illegal to use setjmp unless it's one of four conditions, the relevant one being this: one operand of a relational or equality operator with the other operand an integer constant expression, with the resulting expression being the entire controlling expression of a selection or iteration statement; But if this is a GCC extension, can I guarantee that it will work under for GCC, since it's already nonstandard functionality? I tested it and it seemed to work, though I don't know how much testing I'd have to do to actually break it. (I'm hiding the call to __builtin_expect behind a macro, which is defined as a no-op for non-GCC, so it would be perfectly legal for other compilers.)

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• C standard addressing simplification inconsistency

  - by Chris Lutz

  Section §6.5.3.2 "Address and indirection operators" ¶3 says (relevant section only): The unary & operator returns the address of its operand. ... If the operand is the result of a unary * operator, neither that operator nor the & operator is evaluated and the result is as if both were omitted, except that the constraints on the operators still apply and the result is not an lvalue. Similarly, if the operand is the result of a [] operator, neither the & operator nor the unary * that is implied by the [] is evaluated and the result is as if the & operator were removed and the [] operator were changed to a + operator. ... This means that this: int *i = NULL; printf("%p", (void *) (&*i) ); printf("%p", (void *) (&i[10]) ); Should be perfectly legal, printing the null pointer (probably 0) and the null pointer plus 10 (probably 10). The standard seems very clear that both of those cases are required to be optimized. However, it doesn't seem to require the following to be optimized: struct { int a; short b; } *s = 0; printf("%p", (void *) (&s->b) ); This seems awfully inconsistent. I can see no reason that the above code shouldn't print the null pointer plus sizeof(int) (possibly 4). Simplifying a &-> expression is going to be the same conceptually (IMHO) as &[], a simple address-plus-offset. It's even an offset that's going to be determinable at compile time, rather than potentially runtime with the [] operator. Is there anything in the rationale about why this is so seemingly inconsistent?

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• What does it mean to do/determine something "programmatically"?

  - by Chris Lutz

  Programmatically. (alt. programmically) I've never used it, but I see it in questions a lot, i.e. "How to programmatically determine [insert task here]". Firefox immediately tells me that neither of these two words are real (at least, it doesn't recognize them). I've also never seen them used anywhere but here. 1) What does it mean to do/determine something "programmatically"? 2) Why do so many people ask how to do/determine something "programmatically"? Isn't it assumed that, if you're asking how to do something on a programming help board, you're asking how to do it "programmatically"? 3) Why is it that I've never seen the word "programmatically" anywhere else?

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• Behind the scenes with the developers of .NET Reflector 6 and .NET Reflector Pro

  Lutz Roeder handed over responsibility for development of .NET Reflector to Red Gate nearly eighteen months ago. "What's been happening since then?", one might ask. The answer is "Rather a lot," as we found out when we sent Bob Cramblitt to the .NET team, also known as the "Managed Heap," to find out.

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• how to follow python polymorphism standards with math functions

  - by krishnab

  So I am reading up on python in Mark Lutz's wonderful LEARNING PYTHON book. Mark makes a big deal about how part of the python development philosophy is polymorphism and that functions and code should rely on polymorphism and not do much type checking. However, I do a lot of math type programming and so the idea of polymorphism does not really seem to apply--I don't want to try and run a regression on a string or something. So I was wondering if there is something I am missing here. What are the applications of polymorphism when I am writing functions for math--or is type checking philosophically okay in this case.

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• .NET Reflector is no longer free - how does everyone feel about this? [closed]

  - by Schnapple

  The upcoming version of .NET Reflector, coming in March, will no longer have a free version. .NET Reflector started out as a free utility written by programmer Lutz Roeder and quickly became fairly indispensable to a lot of programmers. After about four years he sold it to RedGate software, who has maintained a free version ever since, as well as a "Pro" version about a year ago which adds capabilities and starts at $99/seat. The new version will no longer have a free version, will be $35 for the non-Pro versions, and the existing free versions will still work until the end of May. On the one hand it's annoying that the existing free versions will die and obviously I'd prefer there be a free version going forward. On the other hand I respect where RedGate is coming from and the cost for a license isn't prohibitively expensive. Plus it may encourage more frequent updates. EDIT: I originally said it was $35 for everyone but according to this FAQ there's still going to be a Pro version.

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• .NET Reflector Open Source Alternative

  - by bconlon

  When I found out yesterday that one of my top 5 development tools .NET Reflector will no longer be free at the end of February, I thought I'd see if work had started on a good open source alternative...and guess what...work on ILSpy is already well underway!! There seems to be a difference of opinion on what Red Gate said when they purchased .NET Reflector from Lutz Roeder in 2008. They say that they would try to keep it free, where as others think they promised to keep it free. Either way at the time I thought it was a smart purchase by Red Gate as it would raise their profile overnight within the .Net community. But not only are they going to charge $35 for v7 (which is up to them), they have also time-bombed v6 to force users to pay. This I think will lower their profile overnight within the .Net community!! Maybe they are been slightly naive in thinking the community wouldn't just write an alternative?  #

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• Subsume external library into source tree with Autotools.

  - by troutwine

  I am developing a new project, using Autotools for my build infrastructure. I would like to subsume external dependencies into my source tree. These dependencies are using Autotools, as well. How can I configure my project's build scripts to build and link against subsumed dependencies? Though Duret-Lutz's tutorial is excellent, this situation is only briefly addressed in a few slides. I found his explanation deeply confusing. By adding the directory name of subsumed dependencies to the toplevel Makefile.am's SUBDIRS the dependency is being configured and built. It is possible to manually set include paths through CFLAGS, but how do I link against libtool .la files?

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• Finding the Twins when Implementing Catmull-Clark subdivision using Half-Edge mesh [migrated]

  - by Ailurus

  Note: The description became a little longer than expected. Do you know a readable implementation of this algorithm using this mesh? Please let me know! I'm trying to implement Catmull-Clark subdivision using Matlab (because later on the results have to be compared with some other stuff already implemented in Matlab). First try was with a Vertex-Face mesh, the algorithm works but it is of course not very efficient (since you need neighbouring information for edges and faces). Therefore, I'm now using a Half-Edge mesh (info), see also the paper of Lutz Kettner. Wikipedia link to the idea behind Catmull-Clark SDV: Wiki. My problem lies in finding the Twin HalfEdges, I'm just not sure how to do this. Below I'm describing my thoughts on the implementation, trying to keep it concise. Half-Edge mesh (using indices to Vertices/HalfEdges/Faces): Vertex (x,y,z,Outgoing_HalfEdge) HalfEdge (HeadVertex (or TailVertex, which one should I use), Next, Face, Twin). Face (HalfEdge) To keep it simple for now, assume that every face is a quadrilateral. The actual mesh is a list of Vertices, HalfEdges and Faces. The new mesh will consist of NewVertices, NewHalfEdges and NewFaces, like this (note: Number_... is the number of ...): NumberNewVertices: Number_Faces + Number_HalfEdges/2 + Number_Vertices NumberNewHalfEdges: 4 * 4 * NumberFaces NumberNewfaces: 4 * NumberFaces Catmull-Clark: Find the FacePoint (centroid) of each Face: --> Just average the x,y,z values of the vertices, save as a NewVertex. Find the EdgePoint of each HalfEdge: --> To prevent duplicates (each HalfEdge has a Twin which would result in the same HalfEdge) --> Only calculate EdgePoints of the HalfEdge which has the lowest index of the Pair. Update old Vertices Ok, now all the new Vertices are calculated (however, their Outgoing_HalfEdge is still unknown). Next step to save the new HalfEdges and Faces. This is the part causing me problems! Loop through each old Face, there are 4 new Faces to be created (because of the quadrilateral assumption) First create the 4 new HalfEdges per New Face, starting at the FacePoint to the Edgepoint Next a new HalfEdge from the EdgePoint to an Updated Vertex Another new one from the Updated Vertex to the next EdgePoint Finally the fourth new HalfEdge from the EdgePoint back to the FacePoint. The HeadVertex of each new HalfEdge is known, the Next HalfEdge too. The Face is also known (since it is the new face you're creating!). Only the Twin HalfEdge is unknown, how should I know this? By the way, while looping through the Vertices of the new Face, assign the Outgoing_HalfEdge to the Vertices. This is probably the place to find out which HalfEdge is the Twin. Finally, after the 4 new HalfEdges are created, save the Face with the HalfVertex index the last newly created HalfVertex. I hope this is clear, if needed I can post my (obviously not-yet-finished) Matlab code.

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• Five development tools I can't live without

  - by bconlon

  When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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• Linq to List and IEnumerable issues

  - by Otaku

  I am querying an HTML file with Linq. It looks something like this: <html> <body> <div class="Players"> <div class="role">Goalies</div> <div class="name">John Smith</div> <div class="name">Shawn Xie</div> <div class="role">Right Wings</div> <div class="name">Jack Davis</div> <div class="name">Carl Yuns</div> <div class="name">Wayne Gortonia</div> <div class="role">Centers</div> <div class="name">Lutz Gaspy</div> <div class="name">John Jacobs</div> </div </html> </body> What I'm trying to do is create a list of these folks like in a list of a structure called Players: Structure Players Public Name As String Public Position As String End Structure But I've quickly found out I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to Linq. I've got this far my my queries: Dim goalieList = From d In player.Elements _ Where d.Value = "Goalies" _ Select From g In d.ElementsAfterSelf _ Take While (g.@class <> "role") _ Select New Players With {.Position = "Goalie", _ .Name = g.Value} Dim centersList = From d In player.Elements _ Where d.Value = "Centers" _ Select From g In d.ElementsAfterSelf _ Take While (g.@class <> "role") _ Select New Players With {.Position = "Centers", _ .Name = g.Value} Which gets me down to the the players by position, but then I can't do much with this afterwards the result type is System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable(Of System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable(Of Player)) What I want to do is add these two results to a new list, like: Dim playersList As List(Of Players) = Nothing playersList.AddRange(centersList) playersList.AddRange(goalieList) So that I can then query the list and use it. But it kicks the error: Unable to cast object of type 'WhereSelectEnumerableIterator2[System.Xml.Linq.XElement,System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable1[Players]]' to type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[Players]' As you can see, I may really have no idea how to work with all these objects/classes. Does anyone have any insight on what I may be doing wrong and how I can resolve it? RESOLVED: The Linq query needs to return a single iEnumerable, like this: Dim goalieList = From l In _ (From d In players.Elements _ Where d.Value = "Goalies" _ Select d.ElementsAfterSelf.TakeWhile(Function(f) f.@class <> "role")) _ Select New Players With {.Position = "Goalie", .Name = l.Value} and then use goalieList.ToList

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• Supporting Piping (A Useful Hello World)

  - by blastthisinferno

  I am trying to write a collection of simple C++ programs that follow the basic Unix philosophy by: Make each program do one thing well. Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. I'm having an issue trying to get the output of one to be the input of the other, and getting the output of one be the input of a separate instance of itself. Very briefly, I have a program add which takes arguments and spits out the summation. I want to be able to pipe the output to another add instance. ./add 1 2 | ./add 3 4 That should yield 6 but currently yields 10. I've encountered two problems: The cin waits for user input from the console. I don't want this, and haven't been able to find a simple example showing a the use of standard input stream without querying the user in the console. If someone knows of an example please let me know. I can't figure out how to use standard input while supporting piping. Currently, it appears it does not work. If I issue the command ./add 1 2 | ./add 3 4 it results in 7. The relevant code is below: add.cpp snippet // ... COMMAND LINE PROCESSING ... std::vector<double> numbers = multi.getValue(); // using TCLAP for command line parsing if (numbers.size() > 0) { double sum = numbers[0]; double arg; for (int i=1; i < numbers.size(); i++) { arg = numbers[i]; sum += arg; } std::cout << sum << std::endl; } else { double input; // right now this is test code while I try and get standard input streaming working as expected while (std::cin) { std::cin >> input; std::cout << input << std::endl; } } // ... MORE IRRELEVANT CODE ... So, I guess my question(s) is does anyone see what is incorrect with this code in order to support piping standard input? Are there some well known (or hidden) resources that explain clearly how to implement an example application supporting the basic Unix philosophy? @Chris Lutz I've changed the code to what's below. The problem where cin still waits for user input on the console, and doesn't just take from the standard input passed from the pipe. Am I missing something trivial for handling this? I haven't tried Greg Hewgill's answer yet, but don't see how that would help since the issue is still with cin. // ... COMMAND LINE PROCESSING ... std::vector<double> numbers = multi.getValue(); // using TCLAP for command line parsing double sum = numbers[0]; double arg; for (int i=1; i < numbers.size(); i++) { arg = numbers[i]; sum += arg; } // right now this is test code while I try and get standard input streaming working as expected while (std::cin) { std::cin >> arg; std::cout << arg << std::endl; } std::cout << sum << std::endl; // ... MORE IRRELEVANT CODE ...

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