It's better than being an employee working 50+ hours in your own cube, and being paid for 40 hours of work.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

Windows 12 in 2011? What an optimist. The next version, Windows 7, won't even have a service pack 1 by then. At microsoft's current release rate, Windows 12 isn't until at least 30 years from now. :)

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

There are some helpful features in the tool, but if you want to do more than minor cosmetic changes you have alot of work ahead of you. The code is full of spagetti code on top of the lack of code behind, which makes it really hard to wade through. I'm sure you, the author, knows exactly where everything is and how to make the UI look at behave exactly how you want. However, most people will have difficulty. I tried to move the validation error messages on edit_bug to the top of the screen. I couldn't figure out how to do it via the css capability in a way that didn't put the error messages on top of the issue form inputs. I did post a question asking for help with no reply. My next course of action was to wade through the code, and that was just a pain so I gave up. My employer didn't want me to waste more than a couple hours on it. Also, there was the problem of how to handle incorporating changes from new versions into code customizations. Overall, moving the error messages using code just wasn't worth all the effort. Another oddity I found was when I created custom fields in 'development' and then later tried to migrate all the changes to 'production'. I used Redgate SQL Compare to migrate the structure changes and the data changes to the meta data tables. When we ran the code in production, the custom fields appeared on the form in the wrong order, but most importantly when an issue was saved the entered values went to the wrong columns. The issue had to do with how column 'meta-data' is stored, in that some code somewhere is querying the columns by the order in syscolumns and somewhere else is using the configured order in the meta-data tables. I didn't drill down to the actual problem lines of code. But the solution was to manually edit the metadata in the production database so that the order matched the syscolumns order. Sql Compare does not use syscolumns directly which is why it did not see a difference. It is bad programming practice to use syscolumns like this in the first place, and totally couter-intutive to do so when the 'column order' is supposedly defined in the 'meta-data' table. I don't remember the other issues we had off the top of my head. I did post some in the sourceforge forum. You did a good job answering many issues and I commend you for the didication. That's great if the tool works for some people, but I wouldn't recommend it. Would you rather use a tool that was designed to meet the needs of it's users, or a tool that was a learning project? I a

It is horrible. It was written by a guy as a way to learn asp.net. That's not just a put down, but a statement by the author. The author did not use code-behind and considers that a feature because you can just put a revised aspx file in the web site without recompiling. Stay away from bugtracker.net! My last employer forced me to implement this software for their issue tracking which was replacing an entirely paper based tracking system. They went with it purely because it was free. They weren't even willing to consider the $400 site license of another commercial product.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

Are implying that in general contractors are less capable than employees? I've been both an employee and a contractor in various jobs. In both scenarios I've worked with both contractors and employees. I've found that a worker is a worker. I've seen various skill and dedication levels in both contractors and employees. As a hiring manager it is your responsiblity to properly interview canidates and check their references (employee or contractor). And if you are sending work out as a fixed bid project to another company, make sure your contract covers schedules, features, deliverables, change requests, payment (including penalties and/or rewards) and anything else applicable to your project. Don't assume anything, and especially don't agree on anything with just a handshake. Putting it on paper not only keeps both parties honest, it ensures you both really understand what you are getting into.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

1)Clean the registry. There are alot of free registry cleaning tools. Here is the last one I tried: http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm[^] 2) system tool - Disk Cleanup (also pick option to remove all but latest system restore) 3) system tool - disk defrag 4) A spyware removal tool, such as spybot S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/[^]) or Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/[^]). I'd recommend doing all of these things at least once a month.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

In some situations yes, you can copy code from the web. Maybe you need a data access layer, so you use enterprise library, or a customized version of it. Or maybe you need logging, so you use log4net, ent lib logging, or better yet xquisoft logging (shameless plug). But rarely if ever will you be able to piece together an entire business application from anything on the web. Make sure you actually learn how to design and write original code while you can.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

It is smart enough to recognize the difference between whitespace in a string definition vs whitespace between code statements. If you want to see how good the diff tool is, you can use that independently of the source control. This is a free tool. http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/index.html[^] I compared these class files to verify my assertions: namespace DiffTest {   public class SomeClass   {     public string myField_ = "some string";   } } namespace DiffTest{   public class SomeClass{     public string myField_  = "some  string";   } } It highlighted the extra space in the string literal as a 'significant difference', but not the extra space before the equal sign. To reproduce these results, ensure you select menu item "View->Hide unimportant differences". The UI shows the lines with curly braces are different, but not with the significant difference color. The way the tool does this is there are rulesets configured per file extension type. However, If you don't like the sourcegear diff tool, you can configure vault to use another diff tool. http://download.sourcegear.com/misc/sos/help/externalprograms1.htm[^] (I don't work for or benefit from sourcegear for these statements. I just like the tools.)

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

Ware@Work wrote:

But now one person can make fixes to the ABS functionality while another is fixing another method.

I think this is the point with two features in most source control systems; auto-merge and non-exclusive checkouts. Two developers can work on two different methods in the same file, and both can check in their changes without having to manually merge the files. Off Topic:

Ware@Work wrote:

this will be replaced with extension methods.

Hopefully people aren't planning to make every method an extension method with no methods in the actual class. That would just be too hard for most developers to understand.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

Reinier Boon wrote:

To master the more complex stuff (like branching, tagging, restoring a previous version...

True, but that is the case with any source control system. :laugh: It's not that subversion makes it much harder, if at all, than any other source control system.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

This is certainly off topic, but I couldn't ignore this.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Acme.Math.Abs.cs might contain: Acme.Math.Abs ( int ) , Acme.Math.Abs ( double ) , etc.

I think this is a little extreme. So now you'll only have 20 lines of code per file, but now you'll have to many files to look through. You haven't simplified anything.

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Maybe you have a Data Access Layer class and you can split it up by what sort of data are accessed by the methods; employee methods, client methods, etc.

Maybe data access for each of these entity types should just be a different class, not just a different partial class file! If you have a single class file that is "too big", then maybe that class is doing too much. Refactor, Refactor, Refactor. The best usefullness of partial classes is to separate auto-generated code from manually generated code.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]

I do alot of work by myself, but I use source control. There are a number of free source control systems. I currently use Sourcegear vault, which is free for single users. http://www.sourcegear.com/faq.html[^] Quote: "Yes. Both Vault and Fortress are free of cost when used by a single user." Doing a diff on previous version to the current version is more difficult with just a collection of zip files. However, I also burn all my source code directly to CD or DVD periodically, along with the repository backups.

Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]