Archives
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[Tools] Java Path Finder (JPF)
Java PathFinder (JPF) is an Open-Source system contributed by NASA to verify executable Java bytecode programs. JDJ has an interesting article on it, "NASA Open-Sources Java Pathfinder." This is a somewhat historic moment, as this is the first Open-Source NASA program to be actively developed and hosted on SourceForge.
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[Languages] A# - Ada for the .NET Framework
A# is a port of the Ada programming language to the .NET Framework, done by the Department of Computer Science at the United States Air Force Academy. It takes a little work to set it up but if you're interested in Ada, or have Ada code you would like to port to .NET, this may just be for you.
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[Tools] XmlSerializerPreCompiler and XmlPreCompiler
Now in frequent use in my dev environment, I can highly recommend Matthew Nolton's XmlPreCompiler, a GUI front-end to Chris Sells' command-line tool, XmlSerializerPreCompiler. These are very handy when you need to vaidate that some assembly can be serialized. Unfortunately, it appears that I have to drop the XmlPreCompiler.exe and XmlPreCompiler.exe.config directly into the directory where the assemblies I am testing (and their dependencies) exist; I apparently cannot just drop XmlPreCompiler into my \Bin directory or somewhere on my path. If I do that, XmlPreCompiler does not seem to find the assembly's dependencies. The tool still makes my "must have" list.
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[.NET C#] Embedding Resources Into Your Assembly Manifest
While integrating some code, yesterday, I discovered how to embed resources "files" - such as JPG or GIF images, htm files and xsl files - into your assembly manifest. You can then access them via reflection. The first article to examine about this is John Gallardo's Embedding and Using Resources in C#. After that, read up a bit more in Chris Sells' Microsoft .NET Framework Resource Basics.
When you are done, you will know about untyped manifest resources and typed resources (stored in resx files). One advantage of the manifest approach is that you can bundle resources into an assembly that you can distribute to be used in some host application without having to introduce a bundle of files into the host's solution tree. This is a very cool and useful feature.