jeffpaulsen

work post – if you’re one of those folks that reads my blog for the pictures, just move along :)

I’ve got some code that compiles .resx files at run time, using them to make an in-memory resource dll assembly that I can use from a ResourceManager object. I take the RESX and convert it to a .resources file in the temp dir (which I get from Path.GetTempPath()), whose name is in a string var named resFileName.

There’s a bug in this code:

   1:    Dim vbCompiler As VBCodeProvider = New VBCodeProvider()
   2:    Dim codeParams As CompilerParameters = New CompilerParameters()
   3:  
   4:    codeParams.GenerateExecutable = False
   5:    codeParams.GenerateInMemory = True
   6:    codeParams.CompilerOptions = "/nostdlib /noconfig  /define:_MYTYPE=\""Empty\""  /resource:" & resFileName & "

If resFileName is a path containing spaces, our compile won’t go. On some systems, the temp path will contain spaces.

Here's how we get rid of it (see lines 6 & 7):

   1:    Dim vbCompiler As VBCodeProvider = New VBCodeProvider()
   2:    Dim codeParams As CompilerParameters = New CompilerParameters()
   3:  
   4:    codeParams.GenerateExecutable = False
   5:    codeParams.GenerateInMemory = True
   6:    codeParams.CompilerOptions = "/nostdlib /noconfig  /define:_MYTYPE=\""Empty\"""
   7:    codeParams.EmbeddedResources.Add(resFileName)

Simple once you know how. The moral of the story is never concatenate a filename into a string if you don’t have to.

If you don’t write software, this post isn’t going to be very interesting – sorry.

The beta of Visual Studio 2010 showed up yesterday. I put it on a virtual machine running Windows 7, and wrote a minimal application. Here’s how the new IDE looks when editing XAML:

and here it is editing some VB.NET (the new flavor of VB.NET for Framework 4 – notice that we now have automatic properties):

How does it feel? Very fast and responsive given that it’s in a VM, but on the other hand it’s not a big solution loaded up in there. Intellisense feels crazy quick. I’ll try this out with my main solution (200k lines of code, 40 projects, including a few 15k line files) and see if that crushes the performance. If not, I’m going to be delighted.

update: performance on the big solution in the VM is not good. However, it is in a VM, so maybe it will be fine on a nice i7 with plenty of ram.

The defaults for most of the options were “wrong” by my standards, but that’s why they’re options, I guess. I know VB programmers have a reputation for being apes, but when the default for VB options is to not even offer the Debug / Release configuration switch, Christ, what’s that supposed to be helping?

“Generate Test Project” locked up my VM completely, which is fine for a beta.

I’m not sure if AnkhSVN (the only source control plugin I’ve found that’s actually better than using the external tools) works with vs2010 yet.

There are other handheld systems that use PocketPC and 802.11 wireless. 802.11 runs at what frequency? Over 2 Ghz. Our system is in the ISM band, down at 902 Mhz - MUCH lower. What do you notice when a car drives past with the radio too loud, what first? The BASS. Lower frequency carries better.