It has been quite a while since I’ve been there so I’m really looking forward to it.  Hopefully the flu scare and the economy (and associated budget cuts) won’t cut down attendance too drastically.

Here are a few highlights of the capabilities in version 1.0:

• Configuration files for Spring.net, Windsor, and Unity can be parsed and displayed visually in a tool window.  Missing or incorrectly spelled types are pointed out (project reference paths are searched for required dependencies). 
• Navigation to object definitions in supported IoC/DI configuration files
• Any dependencies detected in configuration files can be automatically copied to the project output directory upon successful build.
• Reference Paths can be setup automatically using rules setup in preferences.
• Version conflicts between dependencies are displayed visually and in a tool window.
• Generate a report of all required assemblies for a project’s deployment, including dependencies defined in IoC framework configuration files.
• Extensions can be written to support custom file formats or configuration types.

For more detail in addition to the product pages, we have written a blog post walking through the functionality available in Reference Assistant for Spring.net XML configuration.

If you think you or your team could benefit from a tool like this, download a 30-day trial here.

Since I really don’t use this class very often, I relied on intellisense to give the list of method overloads and I selected the WaitOne(Int32) overload which allows the thread to wait a given number of milliseconds unless signaled first.  My compile worked and the functionality ran properly in Visual Studio 2008 SP1.  Since I share the of the same code base when my product is installed in VS2005, I jumped over and the product compiled and ran perfectly there as well.

I forgot all about this until I was doing the final testing in preparation for a new release.  The first few VPC images took the installation and ran fine.  However, when I ran the installation in a VPC image that had a clean installation of VS2005 SP1 and nothing else, the product did not work properly.  I was puzzled until I enabled logging and found that I was getting a MissingMethodException on the WaitOne(Int32) method.

I’ll spare you the details of the agony but I thought about this for a while and decided to try installing the .NET 3.5 SP1 framework in this VM and, low and behold, the problem vanished.

It turns out this method overload was introduced in .NET 3.5 SP1 but because System.Threading resides in mscorlib and there is only a 2.0 version of that assembly, any .NET 2.0 application (which in my case was the VS2005 package) is able to compile against it and run as long as the SP1 version of .NET 3.5 is present on the machine.

The solution was to use the WaitOne(Int32, bool) passing false to the second parameter which gives the same functionality.

I’ll be watching for this type of thing a little closer from now on.

The event will be free to all attendees so plan on coming if you can make it.  Unfortunately, I will probably end up missing the event since I will be taking a trip to Redmond and flying out that Sunday.

There have been no unworkable problems up to this point.  The issues that I have had so far are:

• Skype 3.8 did not work.  The Win7 installer warned about this and I uninstalled before restarting the upgrade.  After the upgrade, I attempted to install the app (ignoring the compatibility warning) and it did install but crashes without an error dialog shortly after.  The Skype 4 beta 3 release seems to be working properly so far on Windows 7 64-bit so I will see how that goes.
• Virtual PC did not upgrade properly.  I received a message stating that “Virtual PC could not open the Virtual Machine Network Services driver”.  The VMs did run but without any network access.  Uninstall/Reinstall of VPC fixed this issue for me.

I thought I might have a problem with TortoiseSVN but it has worked after the upgrade without any problems at all.

Visual Studio 2008 and 2005 both work fine after the upgrade.  I was expecting that I might have a problem with the Experimental Hive entries for the VS SDKs after the upgrade, but I didn’t have any problem with those either.

My first impressions of Windows 7 are good but I’m not overwhelmingly impressed in the way that some blogs have expressed.  Memory usage seems slightly better but nothing to bet exited about.  Bootup time has improved for me quite a bit, which is nice.  It is encouraging that performance of the beta appears to me to be at least the same as Vista Ultimate SP1 in the worst case and slightly better in some areas.

Some things have moved around on the Control Panel again so that is a little annoying.  One example is the Startup Applications that used to be found under Programs.  This applet appears to have gone away all together which is puzzling but it is possible that I have overlooked it.  Power users know to go directly to the folder but a regular user would be stuck with whatever installers or the OEMs feel like should run at startup. 

The new taskbar/quickstart toolbar combo is nice but I can’t figure out a way to start a second instance of an application, short of going back to the start menu.  This was a feature of the old quickstart toolbar I would like to have back.  An option on a right-click menu would be good enough.  Hopefully I’m overlooking an option somewhere.  [Update 1/13/09 11:35am - Shift+Click will launch a second instance.  That is about the only combo I didn’t try.  Thanks to Markus Egger on Twitter for that one.]

James Avery had already told me that he found it a great resource, but sometimes I guess I need to hear it from more than one place.

The tipping point for me was the discussion around the VB.NET development community and open source.  There was a great discussion of issues at the VAN and it was kicked off because of the lively discussion that had occurred on Twitter a few hours earlier.

I wished I could have participated a little in the discussion but I’ve had a major cold over the last few days and I was a little drugged up on cold medication.  I ended up leaving the meeting after an hour so I could retire for the night so I missed the last part.  Some of the great discussion:

• VB.NET community involvement in open source
• Difficulties encountered when introducing new concepts like IoC and ORM to .NET developers that have not been exposed before.
• Mass Transit
• migratordotnet and the newer Fluent Migrator that is being worked on

I’ll definitely be attending the future VAN meetings and hope to participate.

You can find me on Twitter - darrenstokes.

Here are several tracks to choose from concentrating on both java and .NET.

I was out of town for the first TechFest but everyone who attended said it was well worth it.

I’ve been wanting to attend one of the Houston Geek Dinners for the Houston ALT.NET group but I keep missing them.  The next geek dinner is tonight and, unfortunately, I am going to miss this one as well.  However the VAN is later in the evening so I’ll be checking that out.

If you’ve done any work with Visual Studio add-ins or VSPackages, you know that just getting the background color correct can be a chore.  The Visual Studio graphics editor doesn’t make the task any easier either.

This search has led me to a tool that I plan on sticking with for quite a while:  IconLover.  The tool is easy to use, even for a no talent designer like myself.  My favorite feature is the ability to create image lists in a quick, easy, fashion. 

VSX developers will appreciate this feature a great deal.

By the way, the creator of IconLover, Aha-Soft, didn’t give me a free license or pay me anything for posting this.  I just like the tool and thought I would pass it along.