.NET Tools, Tips n' Tricks

.NET 5/6

• Improvements in native code interop in .NET 5.0
  • https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/40484
• Breaking Change: .NET Docker Repo Name Change
  • .NET Runtime
• GitHub & Azure DevOps Microsoft-Hosted agents

  Please consider using of actions/setup-net-core-sdk action for GitHub Actions or Use .NET Core task for Azure Pipelines to specify the needed .NET version.

  • Setup .NET Core SDK GitHub Action
  • Use .NET Core task (DevOps)
  • Sample Docker image
  • Upgrading our .NET Core 3.1 project to .NET 5
  • .NET 5 Breaking Changes

Multi-platform, SDK detection, Interop, and more

• The Road to Cross-Platform Setup & Bootstrapping in .NET
• C++ Interop
  • https://github.com/microsoft/clangsharp -> https://github.com/microsoft/ClangSharp/tree/master/sources/ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator
  • https://github.com/mono/CppSharp
    • Used by QtSharp, MonoGame, LLDBSharp, Xamarin...
  • http://www.swig.org/
• SO: Cross platform C++ in C# .net Core/5 application
  • https://github.com/xanatos/CSharpCPlusPlusInteropSamples
• CLANG/CMake in VS:
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/clang-support-msbuild?view=msvc-170
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/cmake-projects-in-visual-studio?view=msvc-170
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/linux/cmake-linux-project?view=msvc-170
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/get-started-linux-cmake?view=msvc-170
• Porting C++/CLI to .NET Core - Example:
  • https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/porting-a-c-cli-project-to-net-core/
    • https://github.com/mjrousos/CppCliMigrationSample
• SLN Handling
  • slngen
• CMake/WSL Support in VS
  • https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/build-and-debug-c-with-wsl-2-distributions-and-visual-studio-2022/
• Example multi-platform libs
  • https://github.com/ryancheung/FreeTypeSharp/blob/main/FreeTypeSharp/FreeTypeSharp.csproj
  • https://github.com/freetype/freetype
  • https://github.com/bulletphysics/bullet3.git (used by VS Tutorial here)
• How to install latest clang:
  • Linux
    • use this? https://apt.llvm.org/
  • Windows
    • go to https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/tag/llvmorg-13.0.0
    • download & execute https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-13.0.0/LLVM-13.0.0-win64.exe
    • Add to the system path for all users! (into C:\Program Files\LLVM)

SDK Style & .NET CLI

• Adding AssemblyMetadataAttribute using new SDK project, with MSBuild
• Creating Custom .NET Project Types with .NET CLI Project Templates

Services

• dotnet new worker - Windows Services or Linux systemd services in .NET Core

UI Frameworks

• Avalonia
• SpaceVIL (.NET, .NET Core, JVM)
  • https://www.spvessel.com/
  • https://github.com/spvessel/spacevil
• Ooui
• Comet
• Uno
  • Beyond Uno Platform “Getting Started” – Navigation, Platform Specific XAML and C#, MVVM, JavaScript interop and more
• Cross-platform toolkits: https://grbd.github.io/posts/2016/01/28/gtksharp-part-1-cross-platform-toolkits/

QT Sharp

• https://www.mono-project.com/community/google-summer-of-code/reports/2017/cppsharp-dimitar-dobrev/

GtkSharp

• Old Gtk2 wrapper:
  • https://github.com/mono/gtk-sharp
  • https://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/gtksharp/
• New Gtk3 wrapper:
  • https://github.com/GtkSharp/GtkSharp
  • Gtk 4 support: https://github.com/GtkSharp/GtkSharp/issues/166
• Example apps:
  • Banshee: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/banshee
  • Smuxi: https://github.com/meebey/smuxi
  • Monodevelop: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop
  • Tomboy: https://github.com/tomboy-notes/tomboy

Avalonia

See here

UI Tricks

• How to use CancellationToken With ICommand - A Solid Implementation of ICommand

Code Generation

IQueryable & Expressions

• Look Behind the IQueryable Curtain
• Dynamically Build LINQ Expressions

Generating Reference Assemblies

• https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2020/08/05/generate-reference-assemblies-with-refasmer/

Roslyn-based

• https://gunnarpeipman.com/using-roslyn-to-build-object-to-object-mapper/

Threading / Async / Parallelism

• Async anti-patterns
• I took Stack Overflow offline, again
• A better ThreadLocal<T>
• Unmanaged Thread Utils
• C# : TASK PARALLEL LIBRARY (TPL) WITH ASYNC AWAIT AND TASKCOMPLETIONSOURCE FOR ASYNC I/O OPERATIONS
• Enforcing asynchronous code good practices using a Roslyn analyzer
• Asyncify a method and event response
• System.Threading.Channels: At a high-level, it provides a modern, optimised asynchronous API for in-process publisher/subscriber patterns.
  • Steve Gordon's An introduction to System.Threading.Channels
  • Stephen Toub's An Introduction to System.Threading.Channels

Performance, .NET internals

• Everything in this post: http://mattwarren.org/2018/06/15/Tools-for-Exploring-.NET-Internals/
• Olivier Coanet: https://medium.com/@ocoanet
  • https://medium.com/@ocoanet/benchmarking-adventures-part-1-avoiding-boxing-fc7756385ffb
  • struct + generic trick (perfs): https://medium.com/@ocoanet/testing-without-mocking-5f1fddebc02b
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GTpwgsmHgU
    • https://github.com/ravendb/ravendb/blob/a26c2277612692a0324509dd76df62349314c704/src/Sparrow/Sorter.cs

Michael's Coding Spot

• 7 Debugging Techniques for when your .NET application Freezes (hangs): https://michaelscodingspot.com/7-debugging-techniques-for-when-your-net-application-freezes-hangs/
• Job Queues Series:
  • Part 1: https://michaelscodingspot.com/c-job-queues/
  • Part 2: https://michaelscodingspot.com/c-job-queues-with-reactive-extensions-and-channels/
  • Part 3: https://michaelscodingspot.com/c-job-queues-part-3-with-tpl-dataflow-and-failure-handling/
  • Perf: https://michaelscodingspot.com/performance-of-producer-consumer/
• Pipelines Series:
  • Part 1: https://michaelscodingspot.com/pipeline-pattern-implementations-csharp/
  • Part 2: https://michaelscodingspot.com/pipeline-pattern-tpl-dataflow/
  • Part 3: https://michaelscodingspot.com/pipeline-implementations-csharp-3/

CLI

• DragonFruit and System.CommandLine is a new way to think about .NET Console apps

Tips

• https://blog.mzikmund.com/2020/03/how-to-create-a-blank-solution-without-a-folder/
• Debugging .NET Builds with the MSBuild Structured Log Viewer
• Empty try with finally
• Dynamic loading of native code with .NET
• Making my first contribution on SourceForge using Mercurial (note: the part concerning Hg and Sourceforge is not that interesting, but the beginning of the post is)
• Async/await analyzers: https://cezarypiatek.github.io/post/async-analyzers-summary/

Libs

• Sasa