Microsoft's new agile pace is just killing me.  I'm glad that sp1 will be out some time in the foreseeable future but.  I don't want thing about upgrading to vs 10 in another 18 months. 

Doug Stewart has posted an extensive list of CRL 2.0 bug (hot)fixes.  Its worth a look if your Dot Net 2.0 app is having issues.  Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive list Doug. 

I have seen this issue on a QA server The managed heap becomes corrupted when you run a program that is built by using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 good to see its not my code and that there is a fix for it.

Some of the Hot fix support articles do leave a little something to be desired though I would like to see Microsoft spend the time to detail the cause for each issue so I can better evaluate my need for a given fix.

I was looking for a way to pass a parameter by reference today.  More specifically the setter.

I found a couple interesting blog posts

http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2006/02/10/69047.aspx

notice the comment by Tedesco.

He offers a nice way to do this via an anonymous delegate.

          
            
            
            public
            
            
            delegate
            
            
            void
            
            
            InsertString
            ( 
            System
            .
            String
            
            
            param
             );

            public
            
            
            partial
            
            
            class
            
            
            Bird

             {

            public
            
            
            void
            
            
            FileToDb
            ( 
            int
            
            
            x
             )

{

            FillEntityColumn
            ( 
            delegate
            ( 
            System
            .
            String
            
            
            value
             )

{

            tExtra
            .
            Text
            
            
            =
            
            
            value
            ;

} );

}

} 
          
        

So we actual pass the FillEntityColumn method an anonymous delegate which then sets the property.

PrivateSubButton1_Click(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object, ByValeAsSystem.EventArgs) HandlesButton1.Click

testme(TextBox1.Text)
EndSub
Subtestme(ByRefsAsString)
s = "hello"
EndSub

which a commenter on http://musingmarc.blogspot.com/2006/04/tale-of-two-implementations.html eluded to.  But in vb you still cannot pass a Property by reference, at least not really.  Take a look what vb generates into il.

PrivateSubButton1_Click(ByValsenderAsObject, ByValeAsEventArgs)
DimVB$t_ref$S0AsTextBox = Me.TextBox1
DimVB$t_string$S0AsString = VB$t_ref$S0.Text
Me.testme((VB$t_string$S0))
VB$t_ref$S0.Text = VB$t_string$S0
EndSub

Scott posted a nice article Tip/Trick: Creating Packaged ASP.NET Setup Programs with VS 2005  for deploying your Visual Studio 2005 project.  While Scott's article is focused on deploying to a customer I have found those scenarios to be beyond what VS offers and requires Install shield.  I do this this post is a handy trick for moving your project from dev to QA to staging maybe even production.

start by having a solution with two projects.

In the solution exploder window right click the solution and choose add New or existing item.

For this how two we will add a new c# class

click add.  Visual studio will create a new suborder under the solution called "Solution Items" Class1.cs will be in this folder.

now select one of your projects and right click select add existing item.  Navigate to your solutions directory and select Class1.cs

click the drop down arrow next to the add button

select add as link

You will now have a shared link to a common solution file/class

repeat for each project you wish to add this file/class to.

You can find the updated LINQ samples for both VB and C# here

Incase you missed it yesterday Soma announced the release of Orcas Beta 1, it can be downloaded here.

I wanted to take a moment to point out my new favorite DotNet Function.  At VSLive in San Francisco I was introduced to System.IO.Path.Combine( path1, path2) as string.  I no longer have to deal with the logic of adding a trailing or leading slash when combing  file and directory locations.

I have finally found some programing books at my reading level ;)

• C# for Sharp Kids - An ebook on programming with C#
• VB For Very Bright Kids - An ebook for learning how to programming with Visual Basic
• Code Rules  - A curriculum for learning how to program using Visual Basic. This package includes Teacher materials, Student lessons and quizzes and has been used in schools around the country.
• CurliQue Studios  - A curriculum for learning to build a dynamic web site for a rock band. This one also includes teacher materials. My friend Dave Jacobus blogs about using it with his class and seems to like it.
• Creating your First Website using HTML - Follow along with this Microsoft DigiGirlz Tech Camp presentation to learn how to use HTML to create your own website!
• A list of other kid friendly websites and learning resources.

Microsoft's Kid's Corner

Chris posted a little .net code that took J#'s gzip class and brought it into c#. I did that once back in the 1.1 days when I was desperate to escape implode.DLL(Talk about a fun library) at any rate it sucked so bad (J# runtime dependency anyone?)  That I moved my code to SharpZipLib which rocks.  Any way I digress I happened to comment to Chris that .NET 2.0 has compression.  And Chris says

How does .NET 2.0 provider for zip file decompression? That's new to me.
And why would I use an external library when I can use one that's built in?

Great now I have to find the info to pull files out of a zip archive with system.io.compression.  By chance the MSDN documentation says

This class does not inherently provide functionality for adding files to or extracting files from .zip archives. For an example of manipulating compressed file archives, see Compression Application Sample.

Ok, groovy I can look at your sample application. 

This sample demonstrates compression capabilities available in the .NET Framework. It builds a Windows Forms application that employs the GZipStream and DeflateStream types to compress and decompress files. The sample also introduces several types that are new in the .NET Framework version 2.0.

Great lets compile this bad boy and bask in its coolness.

Ok right what the hell is a .xip file?

I know this can be done and I know I am far to lazy to just write the code myself tonight.  Also I am almost positive some one has done all the work for me.

Indeed Dino has a blog entry System.IO.Compression and zip files 

So now I have proved that maybe I do know what I am talking about.

I received the following exception this morning on one of my projects:

Point Report Viewer encountered a System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException on Thursday, November 16 2006 at 10:58:12 AM.
Exception Details:
System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException: Could not find any resources appropriate for the specified culture (or the neutral culture) in the given assembly.  Make sure "ReportView.resources" was correctly embedded or linked into assembly "PointReport".
baseName: ReportView  locationInfo: PointReport.ReportView  resource file name: ReportView.resources  assembly: PointReport, Version=5.4.2006.1027, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0ca8877e5830dba7
   at System.Resources.ResourceManager.InternalGetResourceSet(CultureInfo culture, Boolean createIfNotExists, Boolean tryParents)
   at System.Resources.ResourceManager.InternalGetResourceSet(CultureInfo culture, Boolean createIfNotExists, Boolean tryParents)
   at System.Resources.ResourceManager.InternalGetResourceSet(CultureInfo culture, Boolean createIfNotExists, Boolean tryParents)
   at System.Resources.ResourceManager.GetObject(String name, CultureInfo culture)
   at System.Resources.ResourceManager.GetObject(String name)
   at PointReport.ReportView.InitializeComponent() in C:\Dev\PointReportView\Main\ReportMainForm.cs:line 462
   at PointReport.ReportView..ctor() in C:\Dev\PointReportView\Main\ReportMainForm.cs:line 112
   at PointReport.ReportView.Main(String[] args) in C:\Dev\PointReportView\Main\ReportMainForm.cs:line 503

It turns out I had added a Class to handle unhandled exceptions in a cs file that windows had generated for a winform project.  so to solve this problem i had to move the unhandled exception class definition to the end of the file.