I really hoped to get Regionerate running quickly on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

Unfortunately, since there are several breaking changes with Visual Studio 2010’s extensibility model, I found myself messing around with it too much.

I’m not giving up, but I just need to clear an afternoon for it. Meanwhile, Since I’ve been getting a whole bunch of requests for quick support for 2010, here’s a quick workaround:

1. Go to “%programfiles%\Regionerate”.
2. Make a copy of “Regionerate.VS2005.AddIn” and call it “Regionerate.VS2010.AddIn“.
3. Open it with notepad, change Extensibility/HostApplication/Version to 10.0 and save the file.
4. Open up regedit.exe.
5. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Visual Studio\10.0\AutomationOptions\LookInFolders.
6. Add a string key named “C:\Program Files\Regionerate\” (or wherever you had Regionerate installed)
7. Start Visual Studio 2010 and go to Tools/Regionerate Settings.
8. Turn off Automatically collapse regions after Regionerating. (Yes, they won’t collapse until I fix it)

Update: Thanks for Mr. Bungle for reminding me to add step 4-6. Mike Patton enthusiasts FTW!

Add your comments here if you have any problems using this workaround.

• Comments in member declaration are not supported. For example:

public void Foo() // comment

{
}

– or –

public /* comment */ string Foo

{

get

{

return “foo”;
}
}

• (Updated: Fixed) No support for #ifdef blocks.
• (Update: Fixed) Attributes with line breaks inside are split. for example

[ Attribute( "I", "Cause",

"Problems" ) ]

public void Foo() { }

• (Update: Fixed) Strings containing single “{” or “}” characters drive the construction mechanism nuts. for example:

public void Foo() { string whoops = “}”; }

• Comment sections that start with “(” cause inconsistent behaviour. for example:

///

• Multiple fields declared in a single line are not recognized as fields (meaning, they are left out of Field regions), For example:

public string a,b;

Note: Multiple fields declared in single line is not recommended. Read section 5.1 from this style guide.

• (Update: Fixed) Code inside comments is interpreted as actual code.
• When the “Auto-Collapse” feature is turned off in the Visual Studio add-in, The cursor does not follow selection after Regionerating.

1. /* */ comment blocks are not attached to members.
2. Multiple types in Generic members ( e.g. IDictionary&lt int, string &gt) are not handled.

Both issues will be fixed tonight, watch for comments for a new version.

Thanks to Lior and Tomer for finding the bugs.

Don’t even bother Regionerating protected internal members with Regionerate v0.4.0.0. It goes insane. I will have a fix out tonight. Watch for comments on this post.

Thanks to Lior for finding the bug!

By “existing regions”, I mean regions that were present in the code before Regionerating. These regions were declared manually by the developer or by some other code generation tool.

As of v0.4, Before constructing the code, Regionerate removes all region declarations. It does this in order to collect all code and produce a consistent layout.

However, sometimes you will want to keep your existing regions since they help keep logical groupings. In order to allow this, Regionerate will need to be able to differentiate existing regions and Regionerated regions.

To do this, Regionerated region declarations will be preceded by some sort of unique identifying string, something like:

#region [rgn] Fields
…
#endregion [rgn]

Regions that start with [rgn] will be automatically removed when Regionerating, and other regions will be kept safe.

If anyone objects, speak up! otherwise, it will be available in v0.6.

• Strings containing single “{” or “}” characters drive the construction mechanism nuts. for example:

public void Foo() { string whoops = “}”; }

• Comment sections that start with “(” cause inconsistent behaviour. for example:

/// &ltsummary&gt
/// ( Whoops.
/// &lt/summary&gt

• Code inside comments is interperted as actual code.
• When the “Auto-Collapse” feature is turned off in the Visual Studio add-in, The cursor does not follow selection after Regionerating.

Here are the main development tasks I have left ’till Private Beta: (by priority)

• Private Alpha bug fixes,
• Support for nested types,
• Notification mechanism,
• Command line utility,
• NAnt build task,
• RegionStyle.Comment,
• Enum builder,
• Delegate builder,
• Interface builder.

And good luck to me.

After completing the Unrecognized Code feature, elements such as indexers, enums, delegates and so on will simply be constructed as Unrecognized Code, meaning that you will not lose them when Regionerating, but you won’t be able to place them in any region. I’ll leave the construction of these code elements to the Private Beta.

I’m going to focus on the plugin the next couple of days, specifically on the keyboard shortcut, auto-expanding regions before Regionerating, auto-collapsing regions after Regionearing and hopefully prepare a setup program.

If I get all that done before May 20th, I’ll try to squeeze in layout separators.

Presentation: Keyboard shortcut to “Regionerate this” button.

Construction: Unrecognized code builder, Interface builder, Enum builder, Delegate builder & Support for nested types.

Layout: Separators.

The rest of the features will be available at the Private Beta.

I’m after a night of 2.5 hours of sleep after finishing up some corners for a short Regionerate presentation I gave today. Went well. I think I’ll rest my head somewhere between the ‘M’ and ‘N’ key. Actually, “Space” is quite comfy.