SharpDevelop

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SharpDevelop

Screenshot of SharpDevelop
Developer: ICSharpCode Team
Latest release: 2..1.0.2429 / March 7, 2007
Use: IDE
License: LGPL
Website: www.sharpdevelop.com

SharpDevelop is a free and open source IDE for the C#, Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) and Boo programming languages.

It is typically used by those who prefer not to use Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. There is a port to Mono/Gtk# called MonoDevelop which runs on other operating systems.

For code completion SharpDevelop uses its own parsers for C# and VB.NET. They were generated using a grammar description and a modified version of the Coco/R compiler generator of the University of Linz. The source code contains this generator. For Boo, the parser from the Boo compiler is used, but resolving the type of expressions and type inference is done with custom code that supports lazy evaluation of the types. SharpDevelop 1.1 can import projects written with Visual Studio, SharpDevelop 2.0 can open and edit them directly. It also can translate whole projects from VB.NET to C# and vice-versa.

SharpDevelop 2.0 has an integrated debugger. It uses its own debugging library that talks to the Microsoft .NET runtime using COM interop.

While SharpDevelop 2.0 uses the same MSBuild project files as Visual Studio, it is still able to use other .NET compilers such as older framework versions (1.0, 1.1) or the Mono compiler.

[edit] Features

  • A Windows Forms designer for C#, VB.NET and Boo
  • Code completion for C#, VB.NET and Boo (including Ctrl+Space support)
  • Integrated debugger
  • Declaration tooltips, debugger tooltips
  • "Go to definition", "Find references", "Rename"-refactoring
  • Function folding
  • Code AutoInsert
  • Code Analysis (using FxCop)
  • Subversion integration
  • A C#↔VB.NET->Boo converter
  • Completely written in C#
  • Compile C#, VB.NET, Boo in the IDE out-of-the-box
  • ILAsm backend
  • WiX backend to create setup projects
  • Integrated NUnit testing support, including code coverage
  • XML documentation preview
  • Everything templated: add new project or file types, or even compilers to SharpDevelop
  • Write C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, HTML code
  • Rich project options
  • Syntax highlighting for C#, HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, VBScript, VB.NET, XML
  • Intelligent braces
  • Bookmarking
  • Code template support
  • Easily extensible with external tools
  • Easily extensible with add-ins

[edit] Documentation

[edit] External links