I'm having a number of issues, and the current one is overcoming a security exception when using iTextSharp.
This article
http://www.junlu.com/list/27/763977.html
To which I was directed following this question I posted yesterday:
Displaying a bar code with iTextSharp using Chris Love's Barcode Handler (2 part)
Seems to be what is required to overcome my problem. But I have searched and searched and cannot find a definitive and simple answer to the question "How do I compile a DLL"
So, having made the suggested modification to iTextSharp, I need to make it into a single DLL.
I have absolutely no idea how to do this, despite an hour of Googling!
I'm using Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. Which according to my searches does not have any built in capability to do this. So... how do I?!
Do I NEED to download Visual Web Developer Pro? I can surely download the free trial and use that, but going forward, I don't especially want to have to download a pay-for program to do this as it's a rare occurrence for my needs.
Related
I am afraid this is an untypical "unspecific" question...
I have a lot of code in Outlook, and this should also be used by other users. Up to now I am exporting the modules and forms from my Outlook, and import them on the other machines. But this of course is quite a hassle on every change.
So I thought about turning them into an adding - easy to do for example for Excel...
I have done some Research now and the following questions are left:
is it right that the only software really useful is Visual Studio?
i did download the Trial Version of Visual Studio, and digged into it... but it seems I can not copy/paste the existing code, but there are a lot of changes necessary in the code - is that right? Is there a Kind of "translation" for the most common things?
Thanks for your answers,
Max
Not sure if by trial version you mean Visual Studio Express which you can find here:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2013-express
In any case this should allow you to copy/paste your code. Also if you are a student/academic you can download the full version for free (https://www.dreamspark.com).
If you don't want to use VS, you could try SharpDevelop and NetOffice as an alternative.
I wrote a series on my blog about how to create an add-in for Outlook. There are quite specific instructions on how to get started, pitfalls I encountered along the way and tips/tricks to help you.
Here is where the series starts: http://www.midniteblog.com/?p=6. You can see all the links for the series here: http://www.midniteblog.com/?s=outlook.
Hope this is helpful for you!
P.S. You definitely want to use Visual Studio for a project like this because of the nature of Microsoft product integration.
I absolutely love the Source Code Ouliner power toy that I use in VS2005 but am upgrading to 2010 and it seems they haven't yet released a new version. Is there anything similar that shows you a basic outline of the file you are currently navigating?
ReSharper, amongst many other features, has a File Structure window which does the same as Source Outliner.
For a free one, try the Solution Navigator in the Microsoft Productivity Power Tools.
Like you, I found this a totally great plug in that saved on the order of minutes per day. No more searching for functions! Luckily Source Outliner has been re-created for VS2010 and is still free. However, sbohlen updated it and it now runs on the (free) DXCore environment. I have been using it ever since I upgraded to VS2010.
You can read along as I got this set up, downloaded all the parts and got it running.
http://unhandled-exceptions.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/23/plugins-for-dxcorecoderushxpresscoderushrefactor-pro-201014-rtm-available/
The download is here:
http://code.google.com/p/dxsourceoutliner/downloads/list
You will also need the DXCore community installer from http://www.devexpress.com
But as a ReSharper user for years now, I will use the File Structure - same sort of view and already built in to R#.
I wish to get a quick feeling for how much “copy and paste” coding we have, there are many tools for C# / Java to check for this type of thing. Are there any such tools that work well with VB.NET?
(I have seen what looks like lots of repeated code, but wish to get some number to help me make a case for sorting it out)
Update on progress.
I have just tried Simian.
It does not seem to be able to produce a nicely formatted report I can sent by email
It does not cope when the names of local variables, or parameters etc may have been changed, e.g it just matches on lines of text being the same.
Clone Doctor does not support VB.NET (only C# and VB 6 and lot of other)
October 2010: VB.net added to langauges supported by CloneDR
Clone Detective for Visual Studio only supports C#
SolidSDD - Source Code Duplication Detector only supports C, C++, C# and Java
DuplicateFinder is open source, but otherwise looks very match like Simian, e.g it just works on lines of text
ConQAT - Continuous Quality Assessment Toolkit seems to have a clone detector that works for VB.NET (not tried it yet)
Gendarme is a bit like FXCop and has a AvoidCodeDuplicatedInSameClassRule rule, this looks very promising, as it avoids the problem of working at the text level. Just tried it, it is the best solution so far, pity it does not search with a greater scope.
Before claiming that this question is a duplicate, please check that the other question addresses VB.NET, as a lot of tools that work well for C# don't work so well for VB.NET. (However it would not surprise me if this question is a real duplicate)
CodeRush 11.2 introduced a new feature called Duplicate Detection and Consolidation (DDC)
http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/markmiller/archive/2011/11/29/duplicate-detection-and-consolidation-in-coderush-for-visual-studio.aspx
Make sure to check out the options for it as well, as you can have it run when so many lines are changed, certainly time has passed, etc.
They've posted some decent videos on the DevExpress site too.
Simian: http://www.redhillconsulting.com.au/products/simian/
[I'm the author of CloneDR ("Clone Doctor").]
CloneDR is parameterized by a full grammar for the programming language in question. So it doesn't just match lines. Rather, it can find clones which are syntactically well-formed, with variations that are more than just identifier changes, regardless of where they stop or start in a line.
The engine on which CloneDR rests, The DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit" is a tool for analyzing large scale systems in any programming language, and uses language descriptions to drive the analysis. DMS has a wide variety of language front ends already available.
Presently it has VBScript and VB6 (as dialects of "Visual Basic"). It doesn't have VB.net, but that would be pretty straightforward to do given the DMS infrastructure and our experience with lots of other languages.
So, CloneDR could do this just fine, with a small bit of effort on our part.
EDIT October 2010: VB.net added as a language CloneDR can process.
Atomiq supports vb.net amongst other languages, and the results are nicely presented.
JetBrains published console tool set Resharper Console Tools to run duplication analysis. Once installed it allows you to do the same analysis as TeamCity does and generate duplicates report locally and even include duplicates search into custom build process with MSBuild. This tool does exactly what you need. More details you can find here at JetBrains blog post
Try Simian:
Simian (Similarity Analyser) identifies duplication in Java, C#, C, C++, COBOL, Ruby, JSP, ASP, HTML, XML, Visual Basic, Groovy source code and even plain text files.
I once saw an impressive demo of Pattern Insight; its CP Miner may be what you’re looking for: http://patterninsight.com/products/cp-miner.php. It seems to be language-independent, though I couldn’t find anything explicit about languages other than C/C++.
Roll up your sleeves and write your own parser to use it with CPD?
See the question for the tools I found.
I'm a small developer in VB6 and VB.net, and use for bugtracking a simple Excel. Seemed to me that I didnt need anything more.
I've wanted to add links to the code. Then:
How can I do it for vb6 and for vs.net?
Is this reasonable? Should I change to a (free) bugtracking tool? Do they have this functionality?
There's a list of bug-trackers in this question.
Do you want to link source code changes to particular bug fixes? That means integrating your bug-tracker with your version-control / revision-control system. (You do have version control, right? It's essential.) You could check the Wikipedia bug-tracker comparison table looking at the revision control integration column.
FogBugz is popular on StackOverflow, I hear it does integrate with version control, and it is free for one-person companies. Disclaimer: it was developed by a founder of Stack Overflow, so that may bias StackOverflow users in its favour slightly.
Does anyone know of an alternative IDE for Sybase Powerbuilder? It feels pretty clunky, after working with VS2008 and Eclipse.
If not, has anyone successfully worked with this language outside the IDE? I'm not against using a simple text editor, but I find edit-import-regenerate-test-export-edit is clunkier than simply using the Powerbuilder editor.
To date, the only tools I have had any success with are:
PowerGen, for builds (with NUnit and CruiseControl.NET)
ConTEXT, which has syntax highlighting for Powerbuilder
PBL Peeper, which has some interesting features not present in the IDE
EDIT: I added a bounty to draw some wider attention to the question. It would be a very nice thing to have, if it exists.
EDIT: Well that was disappointing. The bounty apparently did not cause even 1 new person to look at the question.
None that I'm aware of, although you could probably use a source control tool, edit in your source control repository, and Get Latest Version from the PB IDE to shorten your text editor cycle. Be warned that there are hacks required to edit anything over 128 ASCII. (My guess is that this is to allow everything Unicode to be source controlled in the most restrictive source control tools.)
As Paul said, PB12 is coming with based on the Visual Studio shell, and will include things like collapsible code blocks, Intellisense, etc.... However, for PB12, this will only be used for WPF targets and a few .NET-type targets (like assemblies), last I heard. Win32 targets will continue to use the "classic" IDE.
Good luck,
Terry.
P.S. Thanks for the PBL Peeper compliment.
The PowerBuilder IDE is clunky, but I don't think developing completely outside the PowerBuilder IDE is a good idea. I think there are just too many dependencies right now.
However, the IDE for PowerBuilder 12 will be built using Microsoft's Visual Studio Isolated Shell so it ought to be much better when that is released. Also, I believe they'll be doing away with the PBL format which ought to make source control much easier to work with.
Certainly something to watch.
What I do is right-click the object and edit source. Then I copy the text and paste it into Notepad++ to edit. I copy and paste back to PowerBuilder, then I can save and see any errors. I've got a fairly decent User Defined Language for PowerScript if anyone's interested.
Added:
Please be aware that I've seen the PB Source editor corrupt DataWindows. They were all large DataWindows. To be safe always export DataWindows to edit.
One tool that will most probably make your PB experience way better is Visual Expert, which provides a good source browser. Such a tool should have been integrated into the PB IDE a long time ago, IMHO. Only problem is that it's not free, as opposed to the other tools you mention.
Regarding using external source editors, you can probably take advantage of OrcaScript, which is a scripting language that lets you perform actions such as export and import of PB objects from outside of the IDE. It will require some effort, but you can setup a basic dev env using batch files with ORCA scripts and some additional external tools. However, this setup will lack any visual editing capabilities, which means no (feasible) GUI or DW work. If you're mostly into NVOs, it could work. But then if that's the case, why use PB in the first place?...
I too have heard PB12's use of VS will be limited to some .NET stuff, which will probably benefit only a very small portion of the PB programmers community. I'm afraid the rest of us are stuck with the awful IDE for years to come.
Other than exporting the source and editing it I don't know of another IDE for PB. One problem you may have is that the exported source contains a lot of syntax that is not documented in the manuals. The PB IDE generates this code but there is no support for creating it by hand. I think you are stuck with the PB IDE
In my modest five Years of experiences starting with Powerbuilder 5/6, now using PB 10, I tempt to :
build my own browser from the classdefinition object based on Powerbuilder
tried to use autohotkey in order to open datawindows comfortable (we have several thousands in the project and i am two-finger-driven)
truly investigated in the idea using an external editor/IDE suppoted by an autohotkey script which is undermined by sybase allowing only mouse-click-usage of PB
using Visual Expert which is neither a truly integration in the IDE, nor is really worth in analyzing datwindow/powerscript interaction
ending by build hopes on PB12 Visual Studio, which lacks - depending on compatibility issues - ...
... i came to the conclusion that there will be no chance in improving Powerbuilder to an state-of-the-art language
In my philosophy - I obtained during those years - I distinguish between two types of OOP-oriented languages:
the one that award using object-orientation like C#, Python, Ruby (C++) etc. and very much the Java-Eclipse/Netbeans-Universe does
the other one that punish using object-orientation like Powerbuilder and the old Visual Basic, for example (which is causative the OOP-Idea comes afterwards and is "plugged in").
Especially the demand that all object should always be compiled (regenerated) and that you could't work with ancestors and descandants concurrently makes it painful to use real OOP.
...In memory of the good old Unix(Solaris)/C++ days...
I was researching a replacement solution that would be similar to PowerBuilder and I came across two that caught my eye.
The first was 'React Studio' https://reactstudio.com/ which I found via Alternativeto.net .
And the second was from an ad at the top of some Google searches but it was similar enough and looked good enough at first glance for me to want to take a closer look at it, and it's called 'Servoy' https://servoy.com/ .
Still researching but I currently have React Studio at the top of our list.
The TextPad editor has a syntax definition file for PowerBuilder 6.x contributed by anr#aon.at that I downloaded for free and customized several years ago. It works fine for later versions (including 8), doing keyword color highlighting on PowerScript srx files. Editing large source files in PB could get it to crash so it's usually safer, faster and more convenient to export to srx file, edit outside the IDE then re-import.