Archives
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GhostDoc: Support for VB.Net?
Even though GhostDoc is a tool for C# developers, I had (experimental) support for VB.Net in the 1.9.x versions of GhostDoc. When I had to cut down the feature set for version 2.0.0, I cut the features I cared for the least (that’s the freedom of a hobby freeware project). Well, not being a VB.Net developer at all, VB.Net support was one of those.
After the release, more people than expected have asked about VB.Net support for 2.0.0., so even though I’m not a VB.Net developer and I’m not exactly highly motivated to work on VB.Net support, I’ve decided to take a look into this for the next version. No promises on a release date and if I run into larger problems (which I don’t expect, it should all be a matter of working around slight differences in the Visual Studio file code model), I reserve the right to punt the feature to a later version.
What you VB guys could do is to help me by translating the demo project of 2.0.0 to VB.Net syntax and sending it to me. Sounds like only a small thing, but this definitely would save me some time.
Update 2007–06–04: A huge “Thank You” to Daniel Root for the translation of the demo project.
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GhostDoc News
- GhostDoc 1.9.5 mentioned in MSDN Magazine June 2007
Surprise… I just had skipped the ads when the title “Quickly Add XML Comments to your Visual Studio Projects” caught my eye on page 11. Nice little article and I especially like the last paragraph, where the author (Scott Mitchell) shows that he really “gets it”, instead of falling into the trap of being overly enthusiastic about GhostDoc’s capabilities. - Two weeks of GhostDoc 2.0.0
On May 1st I released version 2.0.0 of GhostDoc. Here’s what happened in the last two weeks so far:- 203 downloads of version 1.3.0 (still many people forced to use VS.Net 2003, it seems)
- 87 downloads of version 1.9.5 (some deep linking)
- 118 downloads of GhostDoc 2.0.0 for Orcas
- 2809 downloads of GhostDoc 2.0.0 for Visual Studio 2005
- My Amazon wish lists
After receiving four books off my GhostDoc wish list(s) in 2006, I’m happy to report that this number has already been surpassed in the first five months of 2007. I’d like to say a big Thank You!
- GhostDoc 1.9.5 mentioned in MSDN Magazine June 2007
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GhostDoc 2.0.0 Released
<summary>
GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML
documentation comments for C#. Either by using existing documentation inherited
from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from
name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.
</summary>
Quick Facts- Support for Vista out of the box
- Support for Orcas (tested: Beta 1)
- Better support for generics, more language elements, new rules, new macros
- Download on the GhostDoc Website
- Users of earlier versions: Please read the ReadMe on upgrading!
(The file is contained in the ZIP file)
About this Release
Version 2.0 is the first real feature release for a long time. Originally intended to be a minor update to fix installation problems on Windows Vista (and to be called 1.9.6), it ended up much larger than I had planned. In the second week of April I had the opportunity for almost one week to work exclusively on GhostDoc, so I used the time to implement the features I was missing the most in my everyday, non-GhostDoc-related work. Along the way I was able to implement a few of the external feature requests waiting in my issue tracking database.
What then followed was what could best described as deployment hell, but I must admit that I was being extra ambitious, targeting a simultaneous release of (separate) versions for Visual Studio 2005 and Orcas plus Vista compatibility (which in my case required a little more than simply patching an MSI). Building and testing setups plain sucks, period. No matter how careful you plan things (very carefully), how much automated your build process is (very automated) or how intensely virtual machines are used (very intensely) – the moment you modify a working setup, you’re doomed. There’s always one more typo, one more slight problem; it seems as if you’re never finished.
OK, enough rambling of a tired developer, here’s the good stuff:
What’s New in GhostDoc 2.0.0:
- Added: Support for Visual Studio codename "Orcas". Note that GhostDoc for Visual Studio 2005 and GhostDoc for Visual Studio "Orcas" are released in separate setups and have to be installed into separate folders. Both offer equal functionality and thus share the same configuration file, though. This will stay this way as long as GhostDoc 2.x is released both for 2005 and "Orcas".
- Added: Support for generic methods. The type parameters are now documented using the
<typeparam>tag. For type parameter names starting with 'T' (e.g. "TKey") documentation text is generated (e.g. "Type of the key"), for all other type parameter names the text is left empty. Note that this behavior is currently hard-coded. - Added: New text generation rules for classes, interfaces and structs (with support for generic type parameters). The default rules generate empty summaries and place the cursor so you can start typing the summary immediately. It is possible to change the summary template to insert e.g. the class name split into individual words, but honestly I don't want to ship GhostDoc with that behavior by default as I didn't find it too helpful. In addition to the default rules, it's also possible to define custom rules (e.g. for classes with a name ending on a specific suffix).
- Added: A new macro
$(End)for specifying the location of the text cursor after the documentation text has been generated. - Added: A new macro
$(Rule)that inserts the display name of the rule that generated for documentation text. Useful for debugging custom rules, this macro can e.g. be used in the custom text that is added to new doc comments (see the last tab of the GhostDoc configuration dialog). - Added: A macro of the format
$(%VarName%)inserts the value of the environment variable with the name "VarName" (or an empty string if no variable with that name exists). - Added: A few language elements are now supported with limited functionality, i.e. without specific rule types (new rule types may be added in future versions, but they didn't have a high priority to be included in 2.0 as the existing functionality already helps a lot):
- enums - empty summaries for the enum and all of its values
- enum values - empty summary
- events - summary starting with "Occurs when"
- delegates - empty summary
- variables - empty summary
- Added: New method rules:
- A rule for
Dispose(bool disposing) - A rule for overloaded operators
- Rules for implicit/explicit conversion operators
- A rule for
- Added: Before upgrading or importing a configuration, it is now possible to quickly create a backup copy by clicking the link in the lower left of the dialog. This is useful especially during an upgrade installation.
- Changed: The experimental support for VB.Net has been disabled in this release. I was pretty tight on my time budget and couldn't spend any time on keeping support for C# and VB.Net in sync.
- Changed: The demo project is no longer installed to a sub-folder of the GhostDoc directory (where it caused problems when working with a non-admin account). Instead, the demo project is now an optional feature with its own setup, suggesting an installation path in the user's Visual Studio project folder.
- Fixed: Error message when installing GhostDoc by double-clicking the MSI file on a Vista system.
- Fixed: When defining custom rules, conditions for method and type names didn't work well with type parameters (generics).
- Fixed: The "Document this" command worked only when the cursor was positioned in a specific way. This has been relaxed, the cursor may now also be positioned on the whitespace before the language element (in the same line as the identifier), or somewhere inside the documentation comment.
Update 2007–05–02: Please guys, please read the instructions on upgrading in the ReadMe!