During the last month we have been receiving a constant flow of daily emails like “where the heck is the VS2010 version???” so we are pleased to announce the public availability of the beta 1 bits which you can download from the Extension Manager dialog or by hand from the Visual Studio Gallery.
Visual T4 for VS 2010 is an almost complete re-write from the VS 2008 version. We wanted to take advantage of the new WPF-based editor and MEF introduced in VS 2010 to offer the best possible experience you can have when editing T4 files.
As a result of this most 3rd party extensions out there in the VS Gallery should be compatible with Visual T4 thus improving your productivity even when writing T4 code.
You can see below the very handy Quick Add Reference in action, working from inside a C# embedded code block:
Or the Regex Editor, used to edit a regular expression inside a C# code block:
The beta 1 bits are pretty stable although there are a few nasty issues that we are working on fixing for beta 2 but we didn’t want to hold on releasing the bits as there were LOTS of you interested in early trying them.
PLEASE share your feedback with us: bugs, suggestions, etc., everything is welcomed and we try to reply to every email we receive. You can follow us @visualt4, reach us at visualt4@clariusconsulting.net, or use the comments on this posts, or the QA section in the VS Gallery entry.
It was about time...
ReplyDeleteSure looks nice on first glance. Intellisense, etc... very nice. But then I tried to compile and serious problems ensued. Apparently Visual T4 and T4MVC.tt (http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC) do not play well together. For now Visual T4 will have to be disabled. Let me know when you have a patch.
ReplyDeleteI'm using my own generic base class and the inherits attribute to provide the exact type - i.e. TemplateBase. The intellisense does not recognize any of the properties or methods I have in the base class, and seems to assume all the default generated properties and methods are there even if I comment one out.
ReplyDeletewhat is the upgrade path from vt4-08 when the vs10 bits rtm?
ReplyDeleteSo I have a simple .tt, intellisense works (with a little ctrl+space prompting ?) and the template runs.
ReplyDeletebut when I attempt to compile the project I get
The type or namespace name 'VisualStudio' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
the editor surface has an annoying habit of going blank after a keypress. the code is still there but need to blur to get the editor to render.
ReplyDeletewow. i guess you were just kidding when you asked for feedback. especially feedback that indicates that the product is unusable. good luck with that approach.
ReplyDeleteinstalling this version gave me problems with subsonic templates. disabling and uninstalling didn't help either. I am so disappointed.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteBeta1 expires in 4 days, and still no word for Beta2. Any updates on this?
George J.
@sky,
ReplyDeleteSorry for not getting back earlier, I believe you may be just missing to add a proper reference in order to get intellisense, can you ping me at vga AT clariusconsulting DOT net so I can help you with your specific issue?
@George,
We've uploaded a new beta 1 build to the Visual Studio Gallery which contains a few bug fixes, plus an extended expiration date. Please update your bits to continue using the beta bits.
Thanks
Hi
ReplyDeleteI've noticed some bugs I want to report.
1) When you include a file and that file imports references (like EF.Utility.CS.ttinclude), your compiler doesn't recognise them and also no intellisence.
2) Similar to above, when you import references directly into the T4, your compiler doesn't recognise them and also no intellisence.
3) Randomly goes into what appears to be an infinate loop while editing text (haven't been able to decipher a pattern). Only work around is to close VS from task manager.
When a T4 is open and being editted, the build property of the file is set to compile, causing the solution/project build to fail. Work around is to set this property to None and then close T4 before building.
When typing too fast, get an exception of Cannot find Key.
When pasting code, the indentation of the whole file sometimes moves to the left hand side. Closing curly braces around a #> <# causes the code on the lower side to be wrongly indented.
Just a note to say I love this plug-in, even in beta. I've had to write some pretty complex T4s which would have been an absolute nightmare without your tool, so thank you :)
Ben
Hi
ReplyDeleteMeant to say above, would be really nice if you also maintained the current indent of the templated code as well as the actual code of the T4.
Ben
Working excellent for me, if it wasnt because of the crazy identation problem.
ReplyDeleteWill you fix it at some time in the future ?