Beta 1 of SharpDevelop2 2.1 is available for download. While I was putting together the annoucement for v2.1 yesterday, I realized that for a point release, we really managed to put in a lot of new cool features:

• FxCop Support
• Component Inspector
• WiX Support
• Incremental Search
• Code Navigation History
• List Data Sources in SharpReport
• XPath Queries
• Code Completion for Different Frameworks
• GoTo XML Schema Definition
• Targeting Different Frameworks
• Hosting of SharpDevelop in 3rd Party Applications

A couple of WOW features (for me, at least): Not only can you compile an application for different versions of .NET, you also get version-specific code completion support. Another cool one is that you can host SharpDevelop in your application, providing your application a "macro editor" (on steroids I might add) with full .NET support. And to pick a third, code analysis rounds out our professional offering in addition to code coverage as well as unit testing.

Two features did not make it for the Beta 1 announcement as they don't yet cover all the scenarios we are hoping for: integrated Subversion support (yeah!) and targetting the Compact Framework for Windows CE devices. Those slipped silently into this release.

As you can see, SharpDevelop is ever growing and the developers working on it can be rightly proud of their achievements!

Finally, a kind of "call to action": let us know what you think! Not only in our forums, but also in your blogs, communities, et cetera. We need your feedback regarding feature set, stability, and much more.

That's not very funny when all you try to do is watch a Live Meeting on another Vista feature on your Vista box (last time, I was saved this problem by LM on Vista not being able to connect to the audio stream). And I thought the last time I saw a system swap itself to death was on Windows 3.0...

In other Vista news - try this: right-click on a .zip archive of your choice, select the Open With... option from the context menu. In the dialog that pops up expand Other and choose Internet Explorer. Fun ensues. 

MWconn got a new homepage which is also available in English (here). What is MWconn anyways? Take a look at my short MWconn setup guide / introduction plus if you use a Merlin UMTS card on Windows Vista, my installation instructions for the U630.

Subversion 1.4 is available. The especially good news? Svnserve can now be run as a native Windows service (more).

EasyBCD is a must-have tool for Windows Vista to manage the new bootloader:

This is a whitepaper published by MS (download here). From the download page:

Gain valuable information about the concepts of social engineering within the IT security workspace. In section one, the guide provides a working definition of social engineering that can be used within a company's security policies and is meaningful to non-IT security staff. The guide describes the aims and objectives of an attacker and shows how social engineering, like hacking, is a threat to all businesses, not just enterprise or government institutions. The guide will also cover:

• Social engineering and the defense-in-depth layered model
• Social engineering threats and defense
• Online, telephone-based, and waste management threats
• Personal approaches
• Reverse social engineering
• Designing and implementing defenses against social engineering threats
• Developing a security management framework
• Risk management
• Social engineering in the organizational security policy
• Awareness
• Managing incidents
• Operational considerations
• Security policy for social engineering threat checklists

From the "Summer of Books": I just finished reading the book Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Great (project management) book, even if you never plan on using VSTS. As there are other reviews online (Mike's and one that includes an interview with Sam Guckenheimer on TSS), I'll simply stick with a "highly recommended".

Aside from just reporting the fact, I decided to write a short guided tour to get you started - and tested it with the most recent version of Windows Vista 5472.

1. Download from http://mwconn.tribal-sunrise.com/ - the site is still German-only, but simply click the link "Version 1.0".
2. Copy to folder UMTS
   
3. Right-click and Run as Administrator
4. You are asked for your preferred language - click No for English
   
5. MWConn asks to create connection-type specific program copies - choose Yes:
   
6. MWConn needs a connection to dial - it can create one itself, so choose Yes:
   
7. You will be presented a message box that informs you about connection creation success / failure. You are almost done, and your UMTS folder now looks like this:
   
8. Run UMTSGPRS (as Administrator). If asked again for the language, choose No to retain English. It will exit with a note that you should edit MWConn.ini.
9. Edit MWConn.ini - you only need to edit a few entries:
   
   08 COM=
   09 PIN=
   10 NET=
   11 APN=
10. Once done, start UMTSGPRS again, and you will be logged into your network:
    

For details on configuring the settings in #9, see the Comments section of my previous blog post Merlin - Yes, Magic IS Required.

Disclaimer: I am the PM for the #develop project.

After almost two years in development, the #develop team has shipped version 2.0 of its open source integrated development environment (IDE) SharpDevelop2. The new version supports the .sln / .*proj project file formats of Visual Studio 2005, therefore you can open and edit existing projects inside SharpDevelop2. The team however does not view SharpDevelop2 as a competitor for the Express line of products (comparison) from Microsoft, but it aims at software developers that need best of breed tools for their software development process - like unit testing, code coverage, documentation generation and more. In the same vein, version 2.1 will complement those existing features with integrated source code control, code analysis tools as well component testing.

SharpDevelop2 is especially well-suited for developers that chose the Boo language, because SharpDevelop2 offers first-class support for code completion as well as the Windows Forms designer. Aside from this unique selling point there a couple of smaller but nonetheless productivity-enhancing features in version 2.0: code conversion (eg VB.NET to C#, but see for yourself), support for Mono, documentation preview, RegEx compilation und quite a few more.

A lot of the features are owed to the ease of integration and extensibility provided by the addin system found in SharpDevelop2. This addin system can be used by developers in their own application - this being the reason for the rather unconventional license choice for SharpDevelop2: LGPL instead of GPL, which is much more common for development tools such as #develop. Re-use by third parties has been the driving factor to change the license.

Thanks to all the contributors that made SharpDevelop2 a reality, especially the technical lead on the 2.x effort, Daniel Grunwald.

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Currently reading: The Security Development Lifecycle