I'm looking for a way to add scripting support with IronPython to an existing .net desktop application and need to be able to have code completion for IronPython there. Code completion should work for keywords, classes, variables, etc. as you type or via Ctrl-Space.
Any suggestions?
Unfortunately, I don't think such a thing exists specifically for IronPython. If you don't need it to be fancy you could something like Scintilla.NET and just run it in normal Python mode and get at least some completion (I think it just suggests things already in the editor buffer).
Providing full IntelliSense is a crazy hard problem, but you could check out the Python Tools for Visual Studio to see how they do it.
Related
I have just switched from Java-development (where I used IntelliJ) to an old WinForms application in VB.net. I have decided to use Rider, since I really liked IntelliJ.
From what I understand Raider's WinForm designer does not yet support VB.net-WinForms.
So my question is if there is a plugin that supports WinForms designing in Raider (to avoid having to switch to VS and avoid using 2 different IDEs).
The Winforms designer from Rider does only support C# with WinForms under Windows. It has recently added support for other toolkits, maybe in a cross-platform manner.
The answer to your question is no: and I don't think they are going to include since there is probably not enough demand. You can still use Visual Studio for the designer and go back to Rider when that part is finished.
My personal advice is to avoid use any designer. WinForms is really easy to grasp, and there are tutorials out there that make the task even easier.
One possibility would therefore be to get rid of the designer files and manually modify the code. An important outcome is that the project will be then editable in any IDE, not only Visual Studio or others with compatible plugins.
I have a C++/CLI library that I would like to use in a Silverlight application. It is supposed to be possible to write code for Silverlight in any .NET language, but so far I've only worked out how to compile C#. Silverlight does not seem to be able to use DLLs compiled for .NET.
I'm using Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4. The only new projects available for Silverlight are C# projects. Porting the code to C# is not a practical option.
How do I compile C++/CLI code for Silverlight?
I think I may have gotten a VS2010 C++/CLI class library project to build with references to (only) Silverlight assemblies.
Update
Ok, it is possible. But it is not nice.
First, you must convince the C++ compiler to NOT load the .NET Framework, using an undocumented compiler switch. But that's not the worst part.
Set your C++/CLI project "Common Language Runtime Support" to /clr:safe
Next, under References, remove all references.
Next, in the C++/CLI project properties, under C++ > Command Line, enter /d1clr:nomscorlib /FU"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Silverlight\4.0.50917.0\mscorlib.dll"
Now, save the project and exit Visual Studio. Open the .vcxproj in a text editor, and change the framework version setting. You want it to be the same as a C# Silverlight project:
<TargetFrameworkIdentifier>Silverlight</TargetFrameworkIdentifier>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<SilverlightVersion>$(TargetFrameworkVersion)</SilverlightVersion>
Now, reopen Visual Studio, and build the project. You'll get an error because the compiler auto-generated a file with #using<mscorlib> and the search path finds the .NET Framework version first.
Silverlight,Version=v4.0.AssemblyAttributes.cpp(1): fatal error C1197: cannot reference 'c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.30319\mscorlib.dll' as the program has already referenced 'c:\program files (x86)\microsoft silverlight\4.0.50917.0\mscorlib.dll'
Double-click the error to open the auto-generated file. Replace the path-less reference with e.g. (here's where you put your references, not in the project properties)
#using <c:\program files (x86)\microsoft silverlight\4.0.50917.0\mscorlib.dll>
#using <c:\program files (x86)\microsoft silverlight\4.0.50917.0\System.dll>
#using <c:\program files (x86)\microsoft silverlight\4.0.50917.0\System.Core.dll>
Luckily, the compiler leaves your changes in-place. So you should be good as long as no one cleans your temp directory.
Building should now succeed.
Then, you need to go add the DLL created by the C++/CLI project to your Silverlight application. Note that you can't set up a project reference, because VS2010 still isn't convinced that the C++/CLI is a Silverlight project. So you'll have to browse and add the reference as an assembly file. (And it won't automatically switch between Debug and Release to match the Silverlight application).
Final Notes
I got it to run an empty Silverlight application in Debug mode and stop at a breakpoint in the middle of C++/CLI code. Also the C++/CLI code successfully returned a value to C# and the local variable in C# received the correct value. So I guess it's working.
I went through a bunch more steps trying to make this work, but I don't think they affected the outcome. If you run into errors, though, let me know and I'll try to figure out what I omitted from this answer.
Ben Voigt, thanks for this, it worked for me too.
Also, if your C++ code does anything that is specific to the C++ language (i.e. not entirely IL portable) like using stack semantics for an array, you'll get the following error:
could not find assembly 'Microsoft.VisualC.dll' etc.
If you recompile with the full .NET Framework and then dump the IL code, you'll find references to "''.$ArrayType$$$BY06$$CB_W modopt" or something similar. This tells you where to change the code.
I found that after I installed the Silverlight SDK and it got added to "\Program Files(x86)\Reference Assemblies" I did not have to go through all of Ben Voigt's steps, just changing the project file was enough.
Another note, you can also use:
<TargetFrameworkProfile>WindowsPhone71</TargetFrameworkProfile>
if you want to target Windows Phone (install the SDK first).
Silverlight does not support native C++ libraries, nor any P/Invoke scenarios due to security concerns. If your library is pure .Net you might be able to decompile it with ILDASM and recompile for Silverlight with ILASM.
Silverlight is not a powerful development platform like .NET which is tightly integrated with operating system. First of all silverlight is supposed to run on any operating system, so there is no choice of Native API anywhere in silverlight.
Silverlight also does not support MSIL completely, so there is lot of problem in compiling and recomiping it at IL level.
Can you say more about what kind of C++/CLI code you have? Most Rich internet applications (Silverlight's target) do not include any of high powerful computation, instead they are plain simple HTML+JS alternatives. For powerful graphics, you can use Silverlight's PixelShadder support.
Reflector
What you can do alternatively is,
Compile your C++/CLI to regular .NET DLL, use Reflector to disassemble and generate C# source code from your dll, it may not be perfect, but you will have most of your logic converted back in C#.
I was able Ben Voigt's solution to work with some minor changes in Visual Studio 2013
Here is what I did different.
Unload the silverlight project that you want to reference it in. Right click and choose edit project.csproj
Copy the Target Framework Settings. For me this was
<TargetFrameworkIdentifier>Silverlight</TargetFrameworkIdentifier>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v5.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<SilverlightVersion>$(TargetFrameworkVersion)</SilverlightVersion>
For the compiler switch /d1clr:nomscorlib This was not working for me. Also a reference to mscorlib for silverlight was automatically added to the complied output without specifying it on the command line options. This is how I got around it.
Open the project in Just Deompile
Load the Assembly Editor Plugin
Navigate the tree to the references
Delete the reference to the non silverlight mscorlib from the reflexil menu.
Right click on the top level of the tree for the assembly, and save as under the reflexil menu.
I haven't tested all of the functions, but the ones I have tested so far worked as expected.
Thank you Ben, your post has saved me a lot of time. I was thinking I was going to have to port my library:)
I've been tasked with porting an existing Windows GUI app to Linux. Ideally, I'd like to do this so the same code base can be used to build either the Windows version or the Linux version. I'll be doing my work on Ubuntu 9.04. After searching around, it's unclear to me what tools are best suited to help me with this.
A list of loose requirements would be:
The code is in C, not C++, and should compile to build both Windows and Linux versions. Since it's existing code, and fairly large, converting to a managed language like .NET is out of the question for now.
I would prefer if I can use the same dialogs in both systems. In Windows, putting up a dialog is pretty simple. You build the dialog in the Resource Editor in Visual Studio, then call DialogBox() API, and handle the event messages. I would really like to find something that can do the equivalent on the Linux side.
It would also be nice to have a good IDE similar to Visual Studio.
Any helps or hints would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Winelib should let you compile Win32 code under Linux with only a few modifications.
Since your code base is in C, I'd suggest using GTK+. It's a cross platform GUI toolkit. For instance, Pidgin instant messenger GUI is created with GTK+. Glade user interface designer can be used to graphically design UIs.
If you're on a tight budget, and don't mind taking time to work around a fair number of limitations, Winlib is an option. If you're shorter on time, and have a larger budget, you might want to look into Mainsoft instead. It's not exactly perfect, but I believe it supports a considerably larger part of the Win32 API (at a correspondingly higher price).
Is there a way to get the code from a Silverlight publish?
My laptop has completely crashed, and the only thing I have left from my application, is the published website.
Is there a tool or something to get the code from my application?
You can rename the xap to zip, extract it, and use Reflector to pull out the code. It won't recover it exactly or recover the XAML though. As far as I know there's no way to reverse engineer XAML.
Edit: +1 for Shawn for pointing out that the XAML is stored as plaintext resources, so you can recover that too. Not quite sure why it does that, but hey, it's good news :-)
Using .NET Reflector you can can all the XAML. It's stored as resources in plain text.
Try Silverlight Spy. It's a great tool for debugging Silverlight. If you use it in combination with .NET Reflector you can view the decompiled code of any running Silverlight application.
BTW, here are all features of Silverlight Spy.
JetBrains have made DotPeek available. It is currently free (I hope it stays that way, unlike .NET Reflector).
It will also convert Silverlight DLL files all the way back to readable source code! I have tried it on several Silverlight projects, and it works like a charm.
**Note: as of the time of this writing it still gets a couple of things wrong: string concatenations and event handlers generate the wrong code.*
Given the list of new features announced in Silverlight 4, when is WPF still required?
WPF still has a lot fuller 3D rendering capabilities.
Also even though they announced enhancements to the commanding and binding capabilities, that's no guarantee that it will have the full ability that WPF currently has or will have in the next version
Edit: After playing around with Silverlight 4 beta, it looks like pretty much all of the new features (webcam, file access, full screen keyboard, COM interop, etc) only work when the application is elevated trust, and elevated trust can only be enable when running out of browser. Some of this may change by RTW, but for now, WPF still looks like the only way to do these things inside of a browser window
I've been using mostly XBAPs for browser deployments while waiting for a Silverlight version that includes WPF's full templating and data binding capabilities. Perhaps Silverlight 4 will do it.
Several things that Silverlight 4 definitely won't be able to do are:
Allow you to seamlessly integrate your WinForms and MFC user interface components with your application
Efficiently work with data file structures originally defined in C/C++ (with WPF you can simply copy the code across and easily replicate the original C++ code using unsafe and StructLayoutAttribute)
Include unmanaged C++ code in your application
I have not actually downloaded the Silverlight 4 beta yet, so this list is necessarily incomplete.
The next version of Visual Studio will not be written in Silverlight ;) I can't wait to write an Audio utility in WPF---and Silverlight must be sand-boxed away from the incredible Windows Audio subsystem. However, I can see the day when WPF will be called Silverlight (or perhaps the other way around).
When you don't want to depend on a browser to do your work, when you need full and fast access to the file system without prior confirmation, when doing interop with unsafe bits of code. These are the few I can think of, but they might be other reasons as well, depending on what features Silverlight 4 will really have and how well will they really work.
The applications we (in our company) write today use nothing that is not supported by Silverlight except for local TCP/IP connections without limitations.
This is the only reason we are using WPF.
If we could use Silverlight instead (desktop mode) we'd be able to give our customers
the choice of working on Mac (and linux) systems as well instead of being forced (by us?)
to use a recent version of Windows (you'd be surprised how many companies still use old (partially) unsupported versions).
Even in WPF we try to limit access to the system, we create our own sandbox and
try not to go outside of it. (Never require admin rights, never access stuff you don't have to)
So for what we do, Silverlight + real tcp/ip support would be more than enough...
but there is absolutely still room for WPF and I'm pretty sure it's here to stay.
It all depends on what you're building.
Silverlight will always favor small payloads over functionality. Strategically, Microsoft will attempt to out feature Adobe's offerings using Silverlight, while WPF will be competing against other heavy platforms. If you look at WPF 4 you'll notice a push towards heavier weight features. I try to keep in mind that WPF started out as Avalon which was intended to permanently displace Win32. I won't be surprised if one day Windows XX is "native" WPF and Win32 will be emulated.
If you want to do direct database access through ADO.NET that's not something you'll be able to do in Silverlight 4. Access to devices will still be limited although you will now have some printing support and webcam/microphone. I haven't heard anything about 64 bit support so if you want to offer a 64 bit version of your app you'll need WPF. I also think even if Silverlight 4 makes better use of the GPU, it still won't be to the level that WPF utilizes it.
There are also a ton of other assemblies in the .NET framework that Silverlight doesn't include so if you need any of those you'll need to go WPF.
Just like HTML5 will reduce the need for a plugin like Flash or Silverlight in some cases, Silverlight will reduce the need for WPF but there are still plenty of cases where you'll need it.
WPF is still required if you need to do extensive Rich Text (FlowDocument) editing. Silverlight 4 has the new RichTextBox, but it is limited to very basic content, and doesn't provide the full set of features that are available in FlowDocuments in WPF. A FlowDocument can effectively do what the WinForms RichTextBox can do; but if you only need the basics, a RichTextBox in Silveright may do what you need.
The bottom line is that silver light is limiting. So, if you are going to use a less capable technology you should have a compelling reason for doing so. The only one I can come up with, and it is a big one in some circumstances, is that Silverlight is more platform indifferent. I just can't imagine anyone wanting to bring the browser and all of it's headaches into a solution. There must be a good reason.