Any experiences using SharpDevelop to build an ASP.NET MVC app? - asp.net-mvc

I've always used VS for .NET development, but am just wondering about the alternatives around now. I'm especially interested in use for ASP.NET MVC development. I'm not bothered about any of the visual design aspects of vs, but of course love intellisense and the debugging features.
So, for anyone who has tried SharpDevelop when doing ASP.NET MVC:
How did you get on?
What are the main disadvantages and pain points?
Thanks

By the looks of it, SharpDevelop won't have any problems compiling the project and editing the source...you just won't get any tooling support. From what I've read, that includes aspx files.
Having said that, there does seem to be some movement around an ASP.NET plug-in editor for SharpDevelop here.
Source: http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/7872.aspx
As an aside, it might to nice to update this question with your experiences if you go down that route... (:

I have used SharpDevelop to create an ASP.Net WebForms project - didn't have too many issues with it. The lack of a visual designer is certainly annoying, but it forces you to think about the source directly, which is a good thing...
I haven't done anything with MVC yet - though from the sounds of things the only thing that's stopping SD at the moment is the tooling. The core developers might have no plans for that, but it's an open source project, so there's nothing stopping an independent effort.
I've gone a very limited amount of work (bug investigation) with the SD code - it seems to me that once you understand their classes it's not bad code... Their failing as a project has been (as it is with most open source efforts) that everyone wants to code, so the documentation gets ignored. No-one likes writing documentation, but clear documentation might have led to far greater participation...
It's a great project, but their decision to ignore the web is madness.

As Kieron said, you'll be able to compile and you'll lack tooling. Unfortunately, #Develop's forum says that they don't plan to directly support it:
ASP.NET support is not planned for SharpDevelop.
The lack of tooling and knowing that it's not coming anytime soon would be the major pain point for me.

Related

Is there an official page for ASP.NET MVC Futures?

I am planning to integrate Mvc.Futures in my project, but am unable to find any official documentation for this library.
Official project page on nuget.org points to old asp.net project page on codeplex and even there is not so clear where information about Futures can be found.
I might be missing something, but would appreciate if anyone can give me pointers to the right place.
Thanks.
This is follow up on my own question:
I haven't found anything else related to Mvc.Futures after i posted this question, so i ended up using T4MVC which seem to get more love from MSFT than the Futures itself (lead developer of this template is MSFT employee David Ebbo).
We are using it quite successfully so far (more than 8 months) and i am pleased with the results.
For better integration with Visual Studio i am using AutoT4MVC extensions which runs the T4 templates on each change in the sections of the MVC app that require rebuild (such as Controllers, Content*, Views etc..)
To sum up - i would suggest that you stay out of Mvc.Futures for now and use T4MVC instead.

asp.net mvc internationalization automation

Is any tools for automation in internationalization for mvc exist? I need to internationalize web solution now. it wasn't implemented any features for internationalization there. All content are hard coded mostly (I mean view texts, messages and so on). Maybe some one could advice something that will be helpful in this case.
I am not aware of any tools that might help you if everything is hardcoded. I would recommend you the following guide.
Unfortunately with MVC we don't have the benefit of Visual Studio's "Generate Local Resources" command (available in the Tools menu when a Web Form is open), which does just what you need. So unless someone wrote a tool for this, you are stuck with copying your text to resources manually.

Is Visual Studio 2010 Express for MVC development?

I'm a little behind the curve and want to do my first serious ASP.NET MVC project.
Are there any significant limitations or drawbacks in using VS 2010 Express for asp.net mvc development?
No there are no limitations. Feel free to use the VS2010 Express version for ASP.NET MVC development. The only thing is that you cannot use the MS Test framework for unit tests and you have to go for something like NUnit which is not necessary a bad thing :-) It's just that you would probably get a little less integration into the IDE with things like Unit Tests, Code Coverage, ... you will have to use third party tools.
There's just one thing to consider and which is of utmost importance before starting a big project: is the time your developers spend on configuring third party tools cheaper than the paid versions of VS2010? In other words how much is your developers time worth? See point 9 of Joel's test.
One disadvantage is that VS Express doesn't support extensions. I use ankhsvn for version control, which can't be used in VS express. However, why don't you just start with Express? You can always switch to a paid version in case you really need it.
The express editions don't support the StartAction for Start External Program should you need it. See MSDN How to: Change the Start Action for Application Debugging.
I've not found an alternative for that case.
Update: Try http://www2.wealth-lab.com/Wiki/kbDebugExpress.ashx step 13 for a suggestion on making MSVC think its debugging your code directly. - Untried.

ASP.NET MVC 1 and 2 on Mono 2.4 with Fluent NHibernate

I'd like to create an application using ASP.NET MVC, that should run under mono 2.4 (compiling will be done on a Windows box). Has anyone getting luck with this? Here is what I've already tried:
ASP.NET MVC on mono without any persistence model support, and using nhaml as the view engine
S#aml architecture, which is a quite good framework imho, but it depends too much on stuff, that are not working good under mono (like windsor)
The first part worked fine, I didn't encounter any major problems. But I couldn't get the second part working. It seems it's dependency on Castle.Windsor breaks the whole mono support (but there might be other parts too).
Therefore I decided to create an alternative framework, that borrows some of the ideas of s#arp-architecture, but designed to be working under mono (and if I'm able to do this I'll release it for the community of course). The controller and view part is working fine (not much magic here though, they have been always working), but I have some questions before I start job on the persistence part:
What NHibernate versions are working under mono? I've heard 1.2 is working fine. Does 2.0.1/2.1 beta work under mono?
Does Fluent.NHibernate and NHibernate.Linq work under mono? (for the latter it seems it needs some dependcies that aren't avaialable in mono)
Are there any good alternatives for persistence support to NHibernate under mono?
Alternative questions:
Are there any frameworks that have mono+persistence+asp.net mvc support already or am I the first one to think about this?
If you have already done this: what are your opinions on stability/usability?
Thanks for the answers
EDIT: Updated the framework to support ASP.NET MVC 2: http://shaml.sztupy.hu/
I am using mono 2.4 to run a asp.net mvc app + windows service.
Compatibility is very good. There are some bugs and differences than with windows but once you learn what they are it gets easier (there can be pain at the start!)
I am using NHibernate (2.1) FluentNhibernate, StructureMap, NBehave, Moq and open id lib and they all just seem to work as expected.
As for stability, since I have ironed out the major bugs in my code I haven't had any problems.
Usability, well it is a completely different platform so you need to come to it with an open mind and be prepared to leave behind the windows way.. the good news is that once you do that things get easier. Apache is a lot nicer than IIS and configuring and managing a linux box is just easier than windows.
I am pretty glad I choose mono.. sorry this is starting to sound like a PR drive - but I am just really happy with it!!
Okay. I started on a new project that incorporates the best from S#arp Architecture with stuff, that work on mono. Instead of T4Toolkit it uses a ruby script to do the generation job, just as with rails or merb.
To use install the shaml gem from github:
gem install shaml
Then create a new application:
shaml generate app AppName
And create resources:
shaml generate resource NewRes "name:string;date:DateTime"
S#aml Architecture project homepage: http://shaml.sztupy.hu/
GitHub project: http://github.com/sztupy/shaml/tree/master

Delphi: Moving away from VSS

We are team of few Delphi developers who have been using VSS since years (I know it's a pity), but we don't use any of the advanced features of VCS, so it was working fine in many cases (but some times it was driving me crazy :( ).
The good thing that we have with VSS that we use third-party plug-ins to integrate VSS with Delphi, which is working great, but now when our projects becomes larger, and we would like to move a way from VSS.
I have looked at few other VCS (free and commercial) and found most of them seems be made for Linux guys, and you have to use command line for many admin work(I know I'm windows guy :P).
What I'm looking for the new Version control that it should be easy to use and to maintain and Integrated nicely with Delphi IDE (D2007), or at least have a good UI for the Admins an developers.
Just use SVN and an excellent TortoiseSVN client which integrates with the Windows Explorer.
P.S. Found this question: What is the best set of tools to develop Win32 Delphi applications? and this Delphi IDE/TortoiseSVN integration tools in one of the answers: http://delphiaddinfortortoisesvn.tigris.org/
You should at least take a look at JVCS. It integrates with the Delphi IDE, it's written in Delphi and is open source, and you can choose from a number of databases including Firebird to store your archive in.
There is Team Coherence (http://www.teamcoherence.com/) which is written in Delphi and integrates with the IDE very well. We still use it. Support is patchy though.
Most people seem to be moving to SubVersion though.
Team Coherence is a good choice. They just released a new client, so it looks like support is alive and well.
Unless you are directly heading to SVN (which I wouldn't recommend, if you're thinking on something free go to Git or Mercurial) check Plastic SCM. Find a couple of Delphi specific tutorials here:
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/branching-and-merging-with-delphi-part.html
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/branching-and-merging-with-delphi-part_02.html
Our Delphi team recently (last year ) upgraded from VSS to Perforce which is an absolute joy to work with. It is expensive but is well worth it. It makes source code control one of the tools of your trade rather than a chore or a hinderance. It has good GUI tools, a great commandline when required and there is a free Delphi IDE integration available online.
It does take a bit of getting used to, but is worth putting in the effort when you get to the point where you can create branches with abandon and merge changes knowing you dont ever have to worry about losing any changes ever. Its fast, efficient and a pleasure to use.

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