asp:review

SlickEdit Tools for Visual Studio

Leverage Editing and Versioning Tools to Your Advantage

By David Mack

When I was approached to do the review on SlickEdit Toolsfor Visual Studio, I was a bit skeptical of the value of an editing packageintegrated in the Visual Studio IDE. I was wrong. I am currently working as aproject manager. As such, I?m always looking to improve our company?sdevelopment process. This is a tool I think we can leverage to improve ourprocess. The suite of tools I reviewed encompassed editing, as well as versioncontrol.

The installation was pretty uneventful and follows astandard wizard format. It was pretty quick, but I would caution you about onething: The tool will overwrite your existing environment settings, so make sureyou back them up. It would be especially annoying if you?ve customized yourenvironment and lost it accidently. After the installation is done you canimport your settings again. Something else to keep in mind: You must have thefull version of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008; the Express editions aren?tsupported in the tool suite.

I opened a simple project after the installation and ascreen appeared indicating that SlickEdit wasn?t sure which source control, ifany, was being used on the project (see Figure 1). At that time I coulddesignate the source control mechanism I was using, or none at all. SlickEditsupports basic source control features for CVS, Subversion, and Team FoundationServer. I configured it to point to my Subversion 1.46 package and SlickEditwas happy. You can designate a default source control provider for SlickEdit,but you also can designate it per project. This is especially helpful if youare migrating between source control applications. The status of files could bedetermined when using the Solutions Explorer and my versioning commands wereall available to me in the context menus.

Figure 1: SlickEdit asking how tohandle a new project.

SlickEdit versioning worked well with Subversion 1.46, butit seemed to have problems integrating with Subversion 1.5. I kept getting anerror when it tried to connect to that version. I checked with the Web sitesupport and it appears they are working on this issue. It will probably beresolved by the time you read this. I also liked other version control features,such as version graphs, searching for versions, line version history, andbackup history.

The version graphs let you see in line graphs how manytimes that file was checked in over time, who contributed to the checking in ofthat file, the frequency at which that file was checked in, and the check-indistribution. I found the first three helpful, but not really the distribution.Maybe it?s just my train of thought; regardless, it does allow you to see yourpeak periods of check-in. I think the graphs could be helpful during a ?LessonsLearned? type meeting.

SlickEdit also allows you to search for versions of filesbased on wildcards and check-in comments. With line version history I can right-clickand see when the last time a check was executed that affected this particularline of code. The last feature I?ll discuss is the backup history. This is theability to see a history of all the saved versions of a file, regardless ofwhether the file was checked in to source control or not.

From a code editing standpoint, I enjoyed the acronyms andaliases feature in SlickEdit. I can type an acronym and then press a controlsequence on the keyboard and my acronym will expand out to a designated string.For example, I can type ?sdw?, hit ?Ctrl + `?, and it will expand to ?Standard.DigitalSignal.Worker?,which could be a namespace or any long annoying string you don?t want to type. Thisis especially helpful if you have a long string or function call that you usesignificantly. Essentially, aliases are like acronyms, except the string youtype in expands to a directory name. It?s a shortcut; although it?s useful, Ididn?t find it nearly as useful as the acronyms. If you have long filepaths, itmight be more useful to you.

It?s a subtle thing, but I definitely liked the commentwrapping feature ? and I like even more that it was configurable. One thingthat?s annoying as a developer is to be typing a comment and have to break yourthought process to start a new comment line or risk sacrificing readabilitywith a long run-on comment. I thought the comment wrapping configuration shouldhave been on the main SlickEdit menu; I didn?t see it and was only able to getthrough using the SlickEdit Tools Assistant. I?m not sure if it?s there and Ijust couldn?t find it, but I did spend some time verifying it wasn?t on themain SlickEdit menu.

You can create XML documentation for your projects usingSlickEdit. It?s the same concept as JavaDoc. It?s very easy to create thedocumentation using a simple <summary> tag. You can decide how and whenyour documentation is created. The options include: on solution load, on build,and every x minutes. If you?re in anenvironment where this documentation is critical and needs to be updated often,the second and third option are probably reasonable. No matter what, Irecommend checking the ?Hyperlink data types? box. This is a slower option, buta more thorough option that allows for easier browsing.

My favorite feature is the code annotation that doesn?tmodify the actual code itself (see Figure 2). This is an ideal tool for peerreviews and code reviews. You basically can right-click on a line of code andput in a comment. I like that you can classify it as a bug or just a comment. Basedon how you classified it determines the color in which it is displayed (thedefault for a bug annotation is red). For a code review, you can announce thefiles that will be reviewed and everyone can create their own annotationsbefore the code review. At that point they can send the comments to thedeveloper or code review coordinator ahead of the face to face code review sothey can see the comments. This feature also benefits ad hoc code reviews whereyour development team sees something and wants to make a note of it but not putactual comments in the code. You can browse all the comments for a particularfile by simply clicking on them. The comment will appear in the right-hand box.It?s a truly nice feature that can pay for the cost of this suite if it?s used correctly.The annotation works well in conjunction with the visualizer that lets youhighlight the code written by a certain developer. This allows you to see allthe lines of code in a file related to them.

Figure 2: Adding new annotations tothe file without actually modifying the code itself.

I found the documentation to be pretty good. The SlickEditTools Assistant basically acts like a mini help directory that you can browseand, once you find what you want to do, click a button to launch that feature. Someof the features had short videos to show you how to use the feature. This waspretty helpful a couple of times when I wasn?t sure how to use a feature. Ifyou use the Tools Assistant and you see a little video camera, you know there?sa video associated with that feature.

There are many other features, such as the profiler, difftool, and code navigation, that you may find useful. Overall, I was pleasantlysurprised with the features. SlickEdit has been around a long time and I hadsome preconceived notions about this suite not having a lot of functionalitythat I?d find useful. That simply wasn?t true. For the price and thefunctionality, it?s worth buying either package (the editing and versioningtools are sold separately or together).

Rating: ????

Web Site: http://www.slickedit.com

Price: US$49for each suite of tools

David Mack is atechnical lead for the National Intelligence Division of Titan Systems and anindependent consultant. He has more than 10 years of experience inobject-oriented programming. Reach him at mailto:david.mack@titan.com.