Favorite Development Tools?

Lost User

Ok, I'll kick this off! (great idea btw Chris) I've been thinking that might be time for me to upgrade some the tools I use here at work, and I'm wondering what others use, and what they like and don't like. Most of my development is still in MFC (yeah, I know, I'm learning the new stuff), but I don't see MFC fading from my job any time soon. Anyway, I currently use Visual Studio (of course), BoundsChecker, Robohelp, I've got the Dundas DevSuite, the Stingray Grid, oh, and Install Shield. I'm interested in what people think about things like Codewright (editor), BugTrapper, CodeWizard, etc. This stuff looks interesting, but is it worth spending money on? Also are there cool things I haven't listed? I've been thinking about Macromedia's new UltraDev as an alternative to InterDev too. Any comments? And

Alvaro Mendez

How about tools for backing up source code? I'm working with another developer on a Visual Interdev web project (in local mode). Unfortunately the server doesn't have SourceSafe attached to it so there's no easy way to do version control on the files that get released. So what I do is that every night before I go home, I backup the files. How? I use a tool called InstallerVISE. It's a pretty nice tool for creating single-file installation programs. I've found it easier to work with than InstallShield and the best thing is that it requires no scripting! So I just open the project in InstallerVISE, hit the "Build" button (just like in VC++), give it a file name, and that's it! I get a quick and painless backup of my source files into one EXE file. Anyone have a similar scheme? Alvar

Lost User

Alvaro, I hear what you're saying about InstallShield. I've found it pretty complicated, and overkill for most of the projects I've worked on. I've thought about tools like WiseInstall and I've seen ads for InstallerVISE, but haven't really invested the time to see what benefit they offer. Funny how when you get familiar with something you sort of just stick with it. Well, that's why I asked the question! How is InstallerVISE for dealing with non-standard installs? Although I haven't had to do it, I understand that you can make custom DLLs that hook into InstallShield. Does InstallerVISE offer something like this? And

George

You could have use CVS (WinCvs) for version control - it can work as Client-Server and locally as well. Try the www.wincvs.org.

Nick Hodapp

George -- thanks for plugging WorkspaceEx. I'm glad you like it :) But you didn't give the link to your own site! Everyone interested in using CVS with Visual C++ should check out http://www.geocities.com/kaczoroj/CvsIn/

John Fisher

I have benefitted greatly from BugTrapper. We haven't handed the agent to any clients, yet -- in-house is where we use it (mostly on NT). This handy tool keeps me from having to install a debugger on many systems I test. Also, it prevents the need for remote debugging when you want to see what's going on inside a GUI drawing section of the code. One great example was that I had a thread-locking problem. I knew it was there, but had no idea how it was happening. (It involved a few re-entered message loops and 3 threads.)The debugger wasn't giving me enough information (the stack doesn't trace between threads), so I set up a BugTrapper trace file. Now, I could step through the execution of multiple threads as though they were one thread (a great boon). After a little looking, I located the lockup and fixed it! Anyway, trying out BugTrapper is the best way to find out if it will be useful in your own work environment. Joh

Jim Wuerch

I 2nd the recommendation on Visual Assist and WorkspaceWhiz. I can't believe how addicting VA is. If you at all like Intellisense, VA is the stuff. They have a demo, and it's worth trying. I use WorkspaceWhiz for the ctags interface, and it's pretty easy to setup, and dirt cheap to boot. ^_^