Lars Wilhelmsen started this meme and he is curious about what addins and customizations for Visual Studio 2008 other fellow developers use in their daily work. Lars actually uses lots of useful tools that I’ve never heard of, so it was quite useful for me to read his list.
In my daily practice as a software craftsman I use a lot of tools, but very few of them integrate with Visual Studio. Therefore I would like to raise another question, and that is; what other tools beside Visual Studio 2008 do you have in your tool belt when developing applications based on the .NET platform?
Here is my list of addins and customization to Visual Studio 2008:
Addins
- TestDriven.NET – A test-runner that supports various sets of testing frameworks; NUnit, MBUnit, XUnit etc.
- AnkhSvn – Subversion Source Control into Visual Studio
- Theme: Distant Shores
- Font: Consolas 15pt
Templates and snippets
- PresentationModel snippet – A snippet I originally created for personal use. I use it when I’m developing WPF application and use the Presentation Model (Mode-View-ViewModel) design pattern. The snippet generate properties
Shortcuts
- Alt + shift + F10 – Activate smart tag. I use it to import namespaces and generate implementation of interfaces that my class implements
- Ctrl + K, K – Bookmark a line of in source file
- Ctrl + K, N – Moves to the nest bookmark in document
- Ctrl + K, P – Moves to the previous bookmark
- Ctrl + B, C – Clear all bookmarks in file
- Ctrl + J – IntelliSense
- Shift + Alt + Enter – full screen
- Ctrl + E, C – Add comment
- Ctrl + E, U – Remove comment
- Ctrl + Shift + B – Build solution
Other tools (developer tool belt)
- XUnit – Unit testing framework
- NUnit – Another unit testing framework
- Moq – Mocking framework
- RhinoMocks- Another mocking framework
- Boo – One of my new favorite languages on the .NET platform. Why? Syntax extensions with macros. You can actually extend this language with your own syntax
- Specter – Unit testing framework implemented in Boo. What’s nice about Specter is that it’s based on the BDD ideology and has a nice DSL for writing those test cases. I also use it for writing tests for code implemented in C# and other .NET languages
- SharpDevelop – Open Source IDE which I use when writing Boo code
- WiX (Windows Installer Xml) – A neat tool for building Windows Installation packages. My friend Jon Arild has some really good posts about this tool
- FinalBuilder – Use this tool for Build Automation and release management. What’s nice about this tool is that it represents the build process in a Visual manner. This certainly lowers the bus factor
- Automise – Visual Batch scripting tool. With this tool it’s really easy to automize manual procedures
- CruiseControl.NET – Continuous Integration (my favorite for years!)
- MSBuild – The main build tool for the .NET platform. Did you know, when compiling your solution in Visual Studio, you are actually starting an MSBuild script? I use MSBuild to script build tasks like compile and unit testing
- Reflector - If you need to have a look at or reverse some compiled .NET applications (MSIL), this is the tool
- Tortoise – Client for Subversion which integrate nicely into your Operating System shell
- Blend – Use Blend for creating GUI (XAML) for Silverlight and WPF
- XAMLExport – Illustrator to XAML export
- XAML Debuggers (Mole, Woodstock) – Use them for XAML debugging
- jQuery
Let me emphasize that I’m using lots of tools, and I’ve probably forgot some of them, but this is the tools that immediately came into my mind.
There is no good reason for me not to use Visual Studio IDE extensions like ReSharper or CodeRush. I’ve several times started to use ReShaper, but there has been something missing every time. For instance, the last time I took it for a test run they didn’t support LINQ, which they do now. I have actually decided to install ReSharper after I’ve published this post, and then take it out for a new test run.
I’m also interested to hear what other fellow developers use for Visual Studio 2008 and other tools they use as a software craftsman. I’m tagging the follow persons: