Recently I embarked on porting the TagLib# library to a Portable Class Library (PCL).  In my efforts I noted some frustration I had of the “convert and compile” flow to find issues.  Well, turns out I didn’t have to do that much pain as pointed out by Daniel in the comments!  The .NET team has released a tool to help out us developers called the API Portability Analyzer (currently in Alpha).  This tool basically looks at any existing .NET assembly and gives you a report to help you see where the APIs used are supported in the various .NET profiles available.

The tool is a single command-line exe and is as simple as launching:

ApiPort.exe path-to-your-assembly-file.dll

I recommend putting this in your path somewhere so you don’t have to remember the full path to launch.  The output from the console tells you very little and only really about what you it is doing:

Microsoft (R) API Portability Analyzer version 1.0 (alpha)
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

To learn more about how this tool works, including the data we are collecting, go here - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=397652

Identifying assemblies to scan. Done in 0.01s.
Detecting assembly references. Processed 1/1 files.Done in 0.23s.
Sending data to service. Done in 2.88s.
Computing report. Processed 508 items.Done in 0.02s.
Writing report. Done in 0.17s.

Replaced output file "c:\ApiPortAnalysis.xlsx"

You may notice that the tool says ‘sending’ and yes, it is communicating with a public service.  The team notes this in the download:

NOTE: During the process of identifying the .NET APIs used by a binary Microsoft collects the list of .NET APIs used by the user submitted binaries. Microsoft also collects the names of various user created APIs. The tool does not collect the binary code, only names of APIs are collected. Microsoft will also collect assembly information such as assembly references for the binary & the Target Framework Moniker (TFM).

The real value is in the output data conveniently formatted into a pre-filterable Excel document.  The process was fairly fast for me, but I suspect might take longer for larger libraries (duh).  An example of the output is like the one here directly showing the TagLib# data that I used above.

If you read my previous post you will see that the areas I had frustrations about are clearly identified in the Unsupported columns for my target platform.  The tool attempts to recommend some alternatives when it can.  I can imagine this gets better over time as the recommendations for TagLib# were only two, whereas it should have provided recommendations for XmlDocument/XmlElement/etc. to the XLINQ equivalent areas.

In the end though, this is a helpful tool for those looking to convert.  I wish I had known about it in advance, but now that I know it is in my toolbox and my PATH!

Hope this helps!

Today Visual Studio 2008 has released SP1 which not only brings some fixes, but also is an added value service pack, bringing some new functionality to WPF as well as enabling a “client” deployment pack of the .NET framework so that those deploying .NET framework with your client applications can have a much smaller footprint (by about 80+%).

With the release of SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 today, the Silverlight team has also updated their tools for Silverlight 2 Beta 2.  Read again: a tools update for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is needed and available for you.  If you install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and your Silverlight projects aren’t working anymore, that’s why!

Here’s the download links:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (release and full download)
• Silverlight 2 Beta 2 tools refresh for SP1

Please note that this update to the Silverlight tools can be used for Visual Studio 2008 RTM as well as the just-released SP1, but NOT for VS 2008 SP1 beta.  Yeah, if that’s mind blurring, let’s boil it down:

Do you want to install VS2008 SP1 (release) and still work with Silverlight 2 applications?  If yes, download the updated Silverlight tools and install after you install VS208 SP1.

I hope that makes your decision easier.  Oh and if you installed SP1 Beta at any time, check out this post from Heath.

finally want to try out that feature to debug your apps and step into System.Web.dll?  it has arrived.

shawn burke has all the blow-by-blow details on setting it up.

as some of you know i've been silent for a lot of december due to a series of unfortunate incidents.  the worst of which was a phone call that my wife was being air-evac'd from our neighborhood.  yeah, not a good call.  she was hit by a car while cycling.  she is getting better now after a surgery and physical therapy.  not back 100%, not even 70% but getting better daily.  in the midst of all of this, i've been battling kidney stones.  anyone who has had these knows that pain killers are your best friend right now.  i've had 3 over the month of december and have 1 more still in the track...and it sucks going day-to-day not knowing if it will be a painful day...so if you see me bust out the ziplock with two pills in it...you know it's a bad day :-).

anyhow, i came home today from going into the office and my wife asked me what the 'nm .net user group' was.  i gave her that 'why are you snooping on me and how did you figure out my email password' look.  then she handed me this card:

wow.  way cool.  the folks of the new mexico .net user group community sent my wife and me a card.  some well wishes to my family to get better.  i thought that was a very thoughtful gesture on behalf of them and from my family a very sincere and humble 'thank you' goes out to you all.  we've been blessed with a lot fo local and distant friends and maybe i'll get around to posting some thoughts on being humble and accepting help...but i'll have to think of a geek twist on it ;-)

i've really enjoyed seeing the growth of the new mexico .net community over the past 2 years thanks in part to a lot of people.  i think they are even experiencing growing pains right now, which can be frustrating but is always a sign of success i believe.

so thanks again to the new mexico .net user group -- if you are a developer in new mexico, you need to be a part of this community.  it is growing and they are doing exciting things.  there are passionate people involved helping drive direction to serve the community...so get out there and be a part of it!

the team over at discountasp.net have just launched .net 3.5 hosting platforms in their offerings!  that's right, you can host your .net 3.5 web apps with them!  if you need a space just head on over there and they'll give you 3 free months as well.

in addition, they've enabled cardspace integration so you can login to your control panel using one of your personal information cards.  pretty cool, i'm going to have to check that out.  thanks to discountasp.net for continued support to user group communities as well as being an early adopter hoster so that early adopter developers can benefit!