Friday, 16 November 2007

Refactor!™ for Visual Basic® .NET 2008 and 2005

Hello,

In VS 2005 you have a refactor possibility in C# but there was none out-of-the-box in VB.NET. In VS 2008 it is still the same (at least in the Beta edition) for VB.NET. You still have to reside to third party products. Something odd to me because I would think that they would have had plenty of time to see how their C# colleagues did it . I guess they give the Visual Studio Eco system some crumbles from the table ...
DevExpress offers a FREE refactor product for Visual Studio. There was already a free version for VS2005. Now they have updated their refactor utility for VS2008. But the good news is that you also can use it in VS 2005. Moreover by registering, you are entitled to download and use a set of bonus refactorings for Visual Basic .NET including:
  • Create Method Contract
  • String Composition to String.Format
  • Rename Local
  • Safe Rename
Check out their web-site (http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/VBRefactor/) for a complete overview of the refactors the add-on offers.
The latest incarnation is called Refactor! Free VB.NET with Bonus Refactorings v2.5.8 release 11 october 2007
  • Standard Version for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 (size 20,197,328 bytes)
  • Bonus Refactorings for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 (size 222,550 bytes) Only after registration.
An example of a refactor form the bonus pack : String.Format. Very handy!
Here some screenshots while executing the String.Format refactor




Regards,

Alexander