To Release an Unbuildable TreeSurgeon?

I mentioned we were getting a release of TreeSurgeon out that included 2005 and now 2008 support. The code is all checked in so if you're interested in getting it, go for it. The "official" release hasn't been put together yet for due to problems with the third party libraries and tools TS includes when creating a new project.

The problem stems from the fact that TreeSurgeon uses old(er) and public releases of things like NCover in the build file it generates. These files are kept in a skeleton tree (where TreeSurgeon is installed to) and copied to the new tree you create when starting a new project. Trouble is Internet time has marched on and some of these tools no longer work for 2008.

When we updated the code/project generation for 2005/2008 support, it was a pretty simple matter of cleaning up the templates and generating new ones. The trouble comes from the tools that don't work with the 2008 compilers or .NET 3.5 framework. This is compounded by the fact that NCover is now commercial. The last (free) version is 1.5.8 but won't work against 3.5 assemblies and the new version (2.0) requires a trial key.

So it's a bit of a pickle when it comes to what version of a tool do we include with the latest version of TreeSurgeon that works for the new compilers? I didn't want to put together a released version of TS with a build that breaks (without developer intervention). There doesn't seem to be any other free coverage tool that I can find that will work here so I'm feeling a little stuck and looking for options.

Anyways, that's the cause for the delay in the official release. As I said, you can still grab the change set which will generate a 2005 or 2008 project however you'll need to manually upgrade the version of NCover and perhaps some other tools in the generated solution in order to get it to compile and pass all the tests. Need to take a look at the latest version of CI Factory to see what they're doing and maybe see if anyone else has some ideas. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts either in the comments here on the blog or the discussion forums here.