IDE Series (3) – SharpDevelop 2.2

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SharpDevelop is an open source integrated development environment that is freely distributable under the GPL license and is used to develop applications in the C#, Visual Basic .NET and Boo programming languages on the .NET or Mono platform. It makes writing, debugging and compiling code into the resulting assemblies easier.

Some programmers decided to port the project at an early stage to Mono/Gtk#; this fork is called MonoDevelop and it is cross-platform. For code completion, SharpDevelop uses its own C# and VB.NET parser. SharpDevelop 1.1 could convert Visual Studio projects into a SharpDevelop project, and only since SharpDevelop 2.0 has it been possible to manage these projects directly. I will describe version 2.2.

It has the following tool windows:

  • Tools – Programming aids, although I did not quite figure out how some of them are used.
  • Definition View – In both cases it stays empty.
  • Bookmarks – Does not show the bookmarks in the file
  • Local variables – Lists all properties and variables.
  • Code coverage – Another one of the non-working windows. It requires the NCover program, the path to which is set in the options.
  • Threads – Lists the thread ID and its name.
  • Breakpoints – It shows me one breakpoint too many, but that does not matter.
  • NAnt – A .build file is added to the project, which can then be run.
  • Callstack – Lists all methods that have been passed through.
  • Loaded modules – Lists all loaded DLLs and executables.
  • Unit tests – Runs methods marked with the attributes TestFixture and Test using the nunit.exe program
  • Report explorer – Works only when not debugging. I do not know what it does, though.
  • XPath Query – When launched at runtime, the whole of SharpDevelop crashes; otherwise it does not work.

Main features of SharpDevelop:

  • Form designer for C#, VB.NET and Boo
  • Since version 3.0, support for the languages F# and IronPython as well
  • Code completion
  • Since version 2.0, an integrated debugger that communicates with the .NET libraries through COM interop
  • Conversion between C# and VB.NET
  • Since version 4.0, a full WPF interface
  • Open Source
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Smart brackets

The Tools menu launches most external programs. Its GUI is in the style of Office 2003. It can detect external changes.

The default editor font is Courier New. On startup it can load the last solution. It can insert a comment header into every file. It works with snippets, which are called CodeTemplates here. It works with Subversion.

The editor has the following features:

  • Highlighting
  • Code completion
  • Folding, double buffering
  • The default encoding is Western

The default menu offers about 15 languages. It is the most serious alternative to Visual C# and above all to Visual Studio.

More information on Wikipedia in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpDevelop

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