Category Archives: .Net

Fun with ILDASM and ILASM: tweaking the code of an existing library

Today I decided it was the appropriate time to upgrade my work PC from Windows 7 to Windows 8. I’m already using Windows 8 on my personal PC as well as on my //BUILD/ Slate. Re-installing an OS is never really exciting but this time I faced an interesting challenge… In this short blog post I share this story !

Check-list

The PC I’m using at work is a HP Elitebook8560P laptop. I had no doubt Windows8 would work like a charm on it, so I started by writing up the list of major tools I need:

  • VS2005 (yes, the 2005 version – that’s a long story… it’s for C++ work)
  • VS2010 + SP1
  • Office 2010
  • Office 2013

I also would like to install VS2012 but one of the .Net component I’m using in the large WPF app I’m currently working on has a bug with .Net 4.5. If I install VS2012 .Net4.5 will be installed to and prevent the execution of my app. This was at least the behavior I found out on Windows7 while taking a look at VS12.

The team in charge of the component (which are co-workers btw) are aware of the issue and already fixed it. We didn’t integrate their last version yet however.

Installation

This is the part you press and button, grab a cup of cofee and get back in front of the screen to press another button. Nothing really interesting here…

Fun-time

Ok, everything is installed. Time to check I can run my app. Arrrrg !!! Crash !!!

I took me a few seconds to figure out that Windows8 comes with .Net 4.5 pre-installed. Well, that’s a problem, at least for me. I reviewed the option I had:

  • go back to Windows 7 and reinstall everything again. I didn’t have the time for that.
  • remove .Net 4.5 from my laptop. This is actually not possible since .Net 4.5 comes with Windows8.
  • come at work very early monday morning and try to grab the new version of the buggy component. This is a very bad option since I’m in the middle of an important delivery…
Then I realize I knew exactly what was going wrong in the component that lead to the crash. What about disassembling the code to IL (Intermediate Language), recompile it and use this hacked DLL ? This is what I did, and it worked very well 😀

Why a crash ?

Just to share the context, the buggy component is a WPF control. It contains UI virtualization stuff. One of the method contains a “throw NotImplementedException”. This method is called when a particular Dispose() method is called. This method was NEVER called prior to .Net 4.5 hiding the problem. The new version of the .Net framework calls the Dispose method properly… and then throws the exception 🙂

Introducing ILDASM and its friend ILASM

ILDASM is the MSIL disassembler provider with Visual Studio. It comes with a very basic UI but you can also use it a command line and dump the content of a .Net binary to a file (containing the IL). So I fired up the VS2010 command prompt and typed:

ildasm.exe Company.BuggyComponent.dll /output Company.BuggyComponent.il

I then opened the file using a basic text editor, navigate to the method which contains this code:

.method public hidebysig newslot virtual final 
 instance void Clear() cil managed
{
 // Code size 6 (0x6)
 .maxstack 8
 IL_0000: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.NotSupportedException::.ctor()
 IL_0005: throw
} // end of method VirtualizingCollectionSelector`1::Clear

I changed it to:

.method public hidebysig newslot virtual final
 instance void Clear() cil managed
{
 // Code size 1 (0x1)
 .maxstack 8
 IL_0000: ret
} // end of method VirtualizingCollectionSelector`1::Clear

Then I rebuilt a new DLL using ILASM. The tool is able to create an executable or an assembly from IL code in a text fix. So I simply typed:

ilasm Company.BuggyComponent.il /key=company.snk /output=CompanyBuggyComponent.dll

I dropped the newly created assembly in the bin directory, and boom, it’s working again. Of course this is a temporary solution but I had fun coming to it 🙂

PS: the 3 screens running Windows8 at home: personal workstation, slate and work laptop

A lap around Team Foundation Service online

Back in September at //BUILD/ I got an invitation code for a new cloud service powered by Windows Azure: Team Foundation Service. A few days after I created an account but I didn’t had the chance until today to really use it. Now that I have some extra-time + an interesting project (involving Windows 8 and Kinect…) it’s the perfect moment to get started. In this post, I share a couple of images (click any of them for full resolution) to show you what TFS online looks like.

Get a TFS online account

TFS online is available in as Preview as requires an invitation code to get in. If you don’t have a code, you can request on the website: https://tfspreview.com/_account/Signup

I have no idea how long it can take to get an invitation code now… Once you have your code, you can create your account and pickup your server URL: https://your-server-name.tfspreview.com.

Log to TFS online

Once you have created an account, it’s time to log in. To do so, simply navigate to the URL your created previously and you will be prompted for your credentials:

You will then land on the home page of your account:

Create a new team project

You can now create a new team project. You must pick-up a name (which cannot be changed when the project is created) as well as the process template you want to use. In the preview, you have the following templates available:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 – Preview 3
  • MSF for Agile Software Development 6.0 – Preview 3
  • MSF for CMMI Software Development 6.0 – Preview 3

I like the dialog when the message when the creation completes 🙂

Connect to TFS online from VS11

Now that the configuration stage is completed, it’s time to log in to TFS from Visual Studio 11.  All I had to do is to open the Team Explorer

And then configure the server URL:

Then the Team Explorer dialog is ready:

Check-in some code

Just for the demo, I created a new WinRT XAML application and check the “Add to source control” checkbox during the creation of the project. Visual Studio asked me where to store this new project:

Then using the Team Explorer, I choose the Source Control Explorer in order to check-in the code, and I got this new dialog right in the Team Explorer panel:

Which in my opinion is very nice and better than the previous version.

Code review

We know have the ability to request a code review right from the Team Explorer. This is another very nice feature:

Project home page

Because I chose the agile process template, the project homepage is “agile-oriented”:

Conclusion

This post was a very quick overview of what Team Foundation Service online looks like. I didn’t dig in any specific feature but I wanted to show you how it looks like. The experience from Visual Studio 11 is very straightforward and the new Team Explorer dialog easy and powerful.

Of course the benefits of TFS in Visual Studio 11 are now restricted in Team Foundation Service Online, it was just easy for me to do so.

MVVM framework explorer updated !

After several requests, I finally took the time to update my MVVM Explorer Silverlight App !

Here is the changelog:

  • update all download stats (based ONLY on CodePlex stats)
  • refresh popularities
  • remove StructuredMVVM (not available on CodePlex)
  • add WinRT support (however, no toolkit seems to support if official yet)
Top 5 (most downloaded & supporting WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone):
  1. MVVM Light (95k downloads)
  2. Caliburn Micro (27k downloads)
  3. nRoute (22k downloads)
  4. Simple MVVM toolkit (10k downloads)
  5. Catel (8k downloads)

As always, feedbacks are welcome !