This article comes with the full source for hosting the WinForms Designers to enable form design in your own app. To my knowledge, none of this stuff is supported, but that doesn't make it any less cool! [mikedub.net/GalleySlave]

Tired of the XmlSerializer’s generic “File or assembly name ctewkx4b.dll, or one of its dependencies, was not found” exception? The XmlSerializerPreCompiler tools checks to see if a type can be serialized by the XmlSerializer class and if it can’t, shows the compiler errors happening behind the scenes so that the type can be modified. Enjoy.

This just in: Mathew Nolton has posted a GUI front-end to my XmlSerializerPreCompiler that you might find useful. Thanks, Matt!

My RSS 2.0 feed exposes end-to-end support for the comments specifications I’m aware of:

• The RSS 2.0 <comments> element to expose a link for a browser-based UI to view/add comments
• The <slash:comments> extension element to expose the number of comments current made on an item
• The <wfw:comment> extension element to expose the URL endpoint for posting comments via the CommentAPI
• The <wfw:commentRss> extension element to expose the RSS endpoint for consuming the comments of an RSS item.

Several other folks are working on producing and/or consuming the <wfw:commentRss> extension as well, including Joe, Sam, Scott, JamesS and Kevin. JamesD posted instructions on how to do it with MoveableType. Hopefully Dare, Luke and Nick will follow suit.

From Rick Childress (www25.brinkster.com/rchildress): Web Matrix 0.6 has been released.

Chris Tavares is making more progress finishing up the Ref-Counting in Rotor project:

class FinalizerObj {
  int n;

  public FinalizerObj( int n ) {
    this.n = n;
    Console.WriteLine(“Created Finalizer object {0}”, n);
  }
 
  ~FinalizerObj() {
    Console.WriteLine(“Finalizing finalizer object {0}”, n);
  }
}
 
class FinalizerContainingObj {
  FinalizerObj subObj1;
  int n;
  FinalizerObj subObj2;
 
  public FinalizerContainingObj( int n ) {
    this.n = n;
    subObj1 = new FinalizerObj(n * 100);
    subObj2 = new FinalizerObj((n * 100) + 1);
    Console.WriteLine(“Creating containing object {0}”, n);
  }
 
  ~FinalizerContainingObj( ) {
    Console.WriteLine(“Finalizing finalizer containing obj {0}”, n);
  }
}
 
class TestApp {
  static void Main() {
    for( int i = 0; i < 5; ++i ) LeakAnObj(i);
  }
 
  static void LeakAnObj(int i) {
    FinalizerContainingObj obj = new FinalizerContainingObj(i);
  }
}

Running this app under our ref-counted Rotor yields the following output:

C:\Home\Chris\Projects\Rotor\src\tests>clix FinalizerTest.exe
Created Finalizer object 0
Created Finalizer object 1
Creating containing object 0
Finalizing finalizer containing obj 0
Finalizing finalizer object 0
Finalizing finalizer object 1
Created Finalizer object 100
Created Finalizer object 101
Creating containing object 1
Finalizing finalizer containing obj 1
Finalizing finalizer object 100
Finalizing finalizer object 101
Created Finalizer object 200
Created Finalizer object 201
Creating containing object 2
Finalizing finalizer containing obj 2
Finalizing finalizer object 200
Finalizing finalizer object 201
Created Finalizer object 300
Created Finalizer object 301
Creating containing object 3
Finalizing finalizer containing obj 3
Finalizing finalizer object 300
Finalizing finalizer object 301
Created Finalizer object 400
Created Finalizer object 401
Creating containing object 4
Finalizing finalizer containing obj 4
Finalizing finalizer object 400
Finalizing finalizer object 401

In other words, all top-level and 2nd-level objects are finalized deterministically. Wahoo!

FxCop should be part of the build process for any .NET code that has a build process. Recommended!

From Matthew Mastracci: I just released the fifth alpha version of my free, open-source .NET profiling application. It supports everything I've thrown at it so far (multi-threaded programs, NAnt, SWF apps) and is getting close to feature-complete. It comes with a basic VS.NET add-in that lets you profile from DevStudio. There is a complete source package on the downloads page for those who are interested in learning how a profiler works, or just want to tinker.

The fact that Windows XP Find in Files only searches files with known file extensions drives me crazy because it skips, among other things, .cs  files. Every time I set up a new system, I have to re-figure out how to fix this. To facilitate that, I put together a .reg file that will search all unknown file extensions as text files. Enjoy.