Laurent Kempé

Extended Visual Studio Whidbey class view with method editing

As I described in my last post I would like to have the possibility to edit only one method in the source code viewer and get to the code by browsing my class hierarchy through two windows exposing classes then methods, attributes...

Now I know why it was a problem from the guys at Microsoft to provide that feature:
Code view is cut from Whidbey HTML Editor

ReSharper by Jetbrains

I finally managed to have my Addins in Visual Studio .NET 2003 working again, with reinstallation of it and then running a repair.

Then I installed ReSharper 0.81; I am part of the Early Access Program, and worked with it for a couple of hours. There is much more features then the older version I tried, and for the moment I am happy with it. It brings lots of added value that will be present in Whidbey in Visual Studio .NET 2003.

What I would really like is a kind of class view where you can browse your solution with types organized. In one window you choose a class, then in another you see it methods, attributes... And when you click one of them then you see in the editor only this part of the source code. I think that regions are quite limited and I would really like to have an editor with that kind of possibilities. During the MVP Summit I discussed with some guys of the Visual Studio .Net team but the answer was most of the time that the client does not work like that. I really see an added value working like that because you can browse easily your class hierarchy and modify easily your code.

Sauce Reader 1.4.1 configuration to post on .Text blogs

After my last post about Sauce Reader I was asked by Gavin Joyce how to configure it to post on .Text blog. So from the menu Tools click on Weblog Accounts, a dialog popup, click on the button Add then fill in like on the following picture picture. Change RPC Path with your path and for sure username and password with yours. Thats it :-)!

Remark: You should read in the RPC Path /lkempe/services/metablogapi.aspx !!!

Sauce Reader 1.4.1 - The ultimate blog reader and writer

I have almost tested all blog aggregators running under Windows that I could find on the Internet. The one I was most convinced was SharpReader but this has changed!!! Now I use Sauce Reader 1.4.1 and I have to say that I am fully convinced about it. The plus is that now it is able to post on .Text from Scott Watermasysk. This message was written using Sauce Reader. What a like most:

• The Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• Support for content in any language or character encoding
• Posting (on .Text) with spell checking
• Search capabilities on archived items
• Flag blog entries
• The fact that it is using .NET
• Free for personal use

Refactoring my publishing tool

I started some time ago to work on a new release of the tool I developed to publish content on my web site Tech Head Brothers. This new release will add the possibility for the author to directly post there article to the website.
This solution is using:

• Word 2003 with it XML features
• XML Schema for the definition of the content
• XSLT for the presentation. Transformation to HTML, PDF using nFOP (FOP is not working properly at the moment), and soon WordML.
• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System
• Web Services Enhancements (WSE), Dime
• SharpZipLib

The authors write there articles using Word 2003 and can visualize on there computer there article the way it will be displayed on Tech Head Brothers. Then when they are ready, they save the Word document and are asked if they want to publish it. The software then parse the XML published by Word 2003 and replace the references to source code files by the real source code with colorization. It also replaces references to images with a new XML tag representing the image. Then it zip everything; the article as a XML file, the images, if there is a zip with source code... And finally using WSE and DIME attachment the article is posted. The website gets the DIME attachment, unpack the zip, save the files on the server, and add an entry to the database. That's it.

I have done all the refactoring by hand. And that's such a pain. I am now used to do that with Whidbey and it refactoring tools. So I have a bit searched on the internet some tools that will match my need concerning refactoring and I could find some:

• .NET Refactoring
• C# Refactory
• ReSharper
• NETRefactor 2.0

I tried several of those in the past but now I really want to use one, but it is impossible cause I get an error message when I add an addin to Visual Studio .NET 2003, for exemple yith .NET Reflector 4:

Any one as an idea?

And the story continue... This time with a good end

After all servers problems from the last days, now I have an issue with IIS 5 on my notebook. I am currently working on a project for one of our subsidiaries in which we have to integrate a backend calculator application. In that project I have to restart IIS with the command iisreset to be able to compile my code and to deploy it, otherwise my dll is locked by IIS. I did it for sometime, and today I worked on the project and when I decided to restart IIS then I get an error message: "No such interface supported". What the hell is this? Come on I need to work. I searched a couple of hours on the web trying different things then I end up uninstalling IIS from my machine rebooting and manually deleting files that where lying on my hard drive. Then after the 128th reboot of the last two weeks I reinstalled it and it worked. :-) :-) :-)

Now for the really cool thing (there is always blue sky after a storm ;) I found a weblog entry by Steven M. Cohn: Multiple IIS Virtual Servers on XP Pro. I really encourage you to read it if you develop ASP.NET websites on Windows XP Pro. Now I have multiple IIS virtual servers running on my notebook and I can switch from one to the other. Awesome.

On the third Virtual Server I had to install Microsoft SOAP Toolkit 3.0 with there command SOAPVDIR.CMD. Reading the script, I realized that there is an option I never saw before -s that let you define the server. So in my case I had to run:

SOAPVDIR.CMD UPDATE myapp -S:3

At least the end of the day was positive.

Windows 2003 Standard Server rebooting in loop

I could go a bit further with my issue to have a Windows 2003 Standard server running. As mentioned here: Windows 2003 crashes after patching - Beginning of another week of hell :-(, I had a hard time to fix this but with some patience and pushing Linux fan colleagues I got it to work for... 10 minutes.

So there is two things I found:

1. If your computer at reboot display an error message saying that the file winn\system32\config\system is corrupt then, you might fix the problem by booting in repair mode from the Windows installation CD, and copy the file from winnt\repair\system to winn\system32\config\system. A chkdsk c: /p /r fix it also for some time.
2. If you try to apply a Windows Update patch and it does not want to install then try one of those solutions listed in the Knowledge Base entry 822798: You cannot install some updates or programs

Ok so what's up? Now that I have my server running, patched with today's 14 Windows 2003 Server patches, firewall activated on all network cards and Symantec Antivirus installed and up-to-date. I install MBSA 1.2, run it, everything ok. I do a new Windows Update to be sure, 1 new Intel network driver is ready to download, I download it, it install correctly. That's fine. Then I decide to make 2-3 reboots to see if everything is ok. Good. I get back from our server rooms and after 15 minutes I try ping the machine, I get an answer for the first packet but nothing for the second packet :-( I try to connect with Remote Desktop, no way. I go back in the server room to see that the server reboots in loop. It gets to the login dialog and then reboots. I start it in Safe Mode and it works correctly and for sure there is nothing in the Event Logs.

Any idea? I am really open, I mean I am so upset about this server.

Blogging Tools

I have tried several tools to read blogs and to publish on mine, I wanted to have one that combines all.

• Newsgator
• Newzcrawler
• RSS Bandit
• Sharpreader

I must admit that I always came back to Sharpreader but this might change after the test of Sauce Reader. I saw some options on some ohers that are missing like the possibility to get the newsgroups (something I would really like), to be able to post pictures directly to a ftp account. The tool looks good and is developed with .NET and lots of components:

Windows 2003 crashes after patching - Beginning of another week of hell :-(

In the last blog I was talking about the end of two weeks of hell (End of two weeks of hell). I thought it was the end but it starts again this week :-(

I tried to install a new Windows 2003 Standard Server. The installation works ok. Then I use Windows Update to apply the 14 needed critical updates. Then the bad things starts. It can install 4 patches but 10 failed. Then it ask me to restart the server. And at reboot I get an error message:

windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \windows\system32\config\system

Thats crazy!!! Did someone had the same issue?

Workshop with Gordon Simpson, BEA's deputy CTO

As reported by Didier here. We had the chance last thursday evening to meet Mr Gordon Simpson, deputy CTO of BEA Systems.

We discussed very intensively different themes, as: