GuruStop.NET

In case you haven’t noticed the update of my previous post about VS 11, Resharper 6.1 nightly build supporting VS 11 has been out already.

• To download Resharper for VS 11: 
  http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/ReSharper/ReSharper+6.1+Nightly+Builds
• To learn more about Resharper 6.1: 
  http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2011/11/resharper-61-eap-opens-much-more-than-a-bugfix-release/
• For details on how the experience with VS11 in general is like, compared to VS2010: 
  http://gurustop.net/blog/2011/11/10/notes-on-using-visual-studio-11-as-primary-ide-on-windows-7/

Notes On Installing Resharper 6.1 Nightly Build For VS11

• The file you download is not an EXE, but it is still an installer. All You need to do is run the file and press "Install"
• You can use the license key mentioned in the download page, but, you may try your existing Resharper 6.0 key as well and see if it works.
• Likely the Resharper keyboard shortcuts won’t work directly. You need to enable them yourself. More on that below…
• UPDATE: If you install a nightly build, then a new build comes out and you try to install it, you get "This extension is already installed to all applicable products.". More on that below…

To enable the Resharper keyboard shortcuts:

In Visual Studio 11, go to Resharper Options menu:

Check the add-ins you installed before Visual Studio 2010 if you enabled VS 2010 integration in them. Particularly TestDriven.NET is the problem. Go to “Add Remove Programs” / “Programs and Features”, find Test Driven.NET, click “Change”, and then modify it to remove VS2010 integration from it.

Also, if you are using AnkhSVN, make sure to download a new latest daily update build and use that, otherwise, you’ll get an exception when starting VS 2010.

I’ll be writing more about VSTS 2010 and .NET 4.0 in the next coming months (if God will), since now I can run it :D (before, I did not have the fix that extends the Virtual Machine expiration after January 1st, 2009).

BTW, for R# deep lovers (like me), Resharper for VS 2010 is expected next month.

Have fun, please!

Avoid Much Talk

I wrote about Resharper 4 performance improvements in an earlier blog post today showing my VS Color Scheme including use of R# nightly builds. My friend Mohamed Tayseer pointed me out that Resharper 4 BETA was released yesterday. If you already know Resharper, skip the blah blah blah talk and get to the download.

Resharper, AKA R#, Who ???

Resharper used to be a must-have add-in for Visual Studio. It completes the features existing in Visual Studio like intellisense (not just smarter intellisense, but also available everywhere, like those areas in ASP.NET markup when you start typing non-standard code to Visual Studio to hook some properties and you get lost alone usually).

Of course it makes the expected enhancements to standard VS editor like parentheses and semicolon completion and other similar features, although it takes you w while to get used to stopping writing those after R# writes them for you!

It also has interesting stuff like SPEED find options (instead of this “Compiling the Solution” messages whenever you want to “Find Reference”) also extended for things like 2-way jump between the base classes / interfaces and their children classes/methods. ad also tons of “Guideline promoting” features like intellisense for  VARIABLE names (like when you type “MailMessage” for local variable type, it recommends names like “mailMessage”, “message”, etc…), and options to detect unused variables and “using” namespace directives, and many other features.

 I blogged my old Visual Studio settings before for Visual Studio 2005, using a dark color theme and optimizing it for Resharper features like Resharper colorings and “Current Line Highlight”.

Today I’m sharing with you my settings for VS 2008. Things have changed a bit since the first time, so, you’ll find the layout different and colors as well, although still dark as well.

The one thing to notice is using “Lucida Console” font instead of the popular “Consolas”. Also, if things look a bit small to you, this is because I’m using “Lucida Console” with size 9, and my entire Windows OS layout is using “Arial Unicode MS” font with size “7″. It’s killing for someone with sight shortage, but you never get enough of a 15 inch laptop screen, even if wide one!

By the way, the version of Resharper used with VS 2008 is the latest of the nightly builds of Resharper 4. The best thing I like about it besides supporting C# 3.0 of course is the performance improvements. Now “Solution Wide Analysis” is off by default and I still get most of the features I need of Resharper. Maybe This is the reason for the massive performance increase or whatever the reason, it’s just nice.