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I’ve recently started using Chocolatey - a package manager for Windows – to install tools and applications. If you’re not familiar with Chocolatey it’s described thus:

“Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows (like apt-get or yum but for Windows). It was designed to be a decentralized framework for quickly installing applications and tools that you need. It is built on the NuGet infrastructure currently using PowerShell as its focus for delivering packages from the distros to your door, err computer.” [1]

Installing Chocolatey is easy and is explained on their homepage. But how do you upgrade Chocolatey to the latest version after you’ve installed?

Firstly, I opened a command prompt as administrator and ran Powershell - actually I used ConEmu which has a convenient tab for just this purpose. I then ran ‘chocolatey version’ to see what’s what.

Looks like there’s a new version. Let’s update. Doing so is just like updating anything with Chocolatey. Run the ‘chocolatey update’ passing in the package name; ‘chocolatey’ in this case.

I’ve truncated the console output but suffice is to say Chocolatey has been updated.

Refecences

[1] About Chocolatey

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I like using Launchy to open and close applications. This includes opening Remote Desktop but it’s nice to be able to jump straight to a Remote Desktop session on a particular machine by simply typing the machine name into Launchy.

The way I do this is:

1. Create a folder under C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs\ called Shortcuts.
2. Add this folder to the Launch catalog using the Launchy options dialog.
3. Create a new shortcut in the new folder.
4. For the ‘Location of the item’ type %windir%\system32\MSTSC.EXE /v:MACHINE_NAME where MACHINE_NAME is replaced with the name of the machine you want to Remote Desktop to.
5. For the name of the shortcut use the machine name.
6. Save the shortcut and get Launchy to rescan its catalog.

 

Now, by tying the machine name into Launchy you can immediately open a Remote Desktop session to the machine.

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I always seem to be setting up development machines and need to install the same set of tools over and over. To help me keep track of them I’m starting a list:

Tool name	Description	Location
ILSpy	ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler. A replacement for Reflector which is now a commercial product.	http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ilspy.ashx
Regulator	An advanced, free regular expressions testing and learning tool.	http://www.osherove.com/tools
XMLPad	XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML documents.	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=72d6aa49-787d-4118-ba5f-4f30fe913628&displaylang=en
Notepad++	Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.	http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
Baretail	A real-time log file monitoring tool.	http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/
Gallio	The Gallio Automation Platform is an open, extensible, and neutral system for .NET that provides a common object model, runtime services and tools (such as test runners) that may be leveraged by any number of test frameworks.	http://www.gallio.org/
Sandcastle	Documentation compiler for managed class libraries.	http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/releases/view/47665
NDepend	NDepend is a Visual Studio tool to manage complex .NET code and achieve high Code Quality.	http://www.ndepend.com/
PartCover	Open source code coverage tool.	https://github.com/sawilde/partcover.net4
WinMerge	WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows.	http://winmerge.org/
Query Express	Query Express is a simple Query Analyzer look-alike, but being small and free it can be run where the SQL Server client tools are not installed or licensed.	http://www.albahari.com/queryexpress.aspx
AnjLab SQL Profiler	A free SQL Server Express Edition Profiler that provides the most of functionality standard profiler does.	http://anjlab.com/en/projects/opensource/sqlprofiler
TreeTrim	This is a command line tool that trims your source code tree. It removes debug files, source control bindings, and temporary files.	http://code.google.com/p/treetrim/
LogParser	Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows® operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory®.	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en
Lizard GUI	A GUI for parsing log files (use with LogParser).	http://www.lizard-labs.net/log_parser_lizard.aspx
cURL	cURL is a computer software project providing a library and command-line tool for transferring data using various protocols.	http://curl.haxx.se/
Wget	GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.	http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
Console2	Console is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles.	http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/
WireShark	A network protocol analyser.	http://www.wireshark.org/
Fiddler	Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet.	http://fiddler2.com/fiddler2/

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To install the ExpressionTreeVisualizer:

1. Get the C# language samples that include example LINQ projects from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/csharpsamples.
2. Open and build the ExpressionTreeVisualizer solution.
3. Copy the generated ExpressionTreeVisualizer.dll file into ..\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers directory.

If and when you set a breakpoint and hover over an Expression you can click on the magnifying glass icon in the pop-up tooltip to access the Expression Visualizer.

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Gallio is a neutral test automation platform designed to help run tests from a variety of testing frameworks in a unified environment. It is a project that seems to be a spin off from the MbUnit team but will run tests from a variety of other frameworks including NUnit.

The Gallio Icarus test runner is somewhat similar to the test runner you get with Resharper. There is also a command line tool called Echo that has support for generating test reports etc.

Gallio also integrates with CruiseControl.Net. You need to setup your build to export a report in Gallio XML format (e.g. run Gallio.Echo.exe as a build task) and update the <publishers> node in ccnet.config. There is then a new report plug-in to be added to the CCNet dashboard to display the Gallio reports.

http://www.gallio.org/

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BareTail is a free utility for watching log tiles in real-time. It is basically like a UNIX tail command in a window:

http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/

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There is a free tool to help learn LINQ - LINQPad. This handy little application allows you to dynamically run LINQ queries against a data source and see the results instantaneously. You can even run plain SQL against the same data for comparison.

Download from http://www.linqpad.net/.

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