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by Tim Sneath.
Original Post: Snippet Compiler
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I regularly find myself opening Visual Studio .NET and creating a whole solution /
project structure purely in order to test or demonstrate a couple of lines of code.
Don't get me wrong - Visual Studio .NET is great, but it's overblown for doing this
stuff.
For a while, I've been using a short hand-crafted batch file that opens a minimal
version of VS.NET when passed a file as a parameter:
--- begin e.cmd ---
@echo off
if not exist %1 copy /y nul %1 > nul
devenv /mdi %1
--- end e.cmd ---
This works well, but I've found a better solution: Snippet
Compiler. This is a little app that combines a simple colour-coded text editor
(borrowed from SharpDevelop),
an errors / output window, and hardcoded support for C# and VB compilers. Even neater
is that it supports ASP.NET well. There's a screen shot at the website if you want
to see what the UI looks like.
Perfect for those short demos where you don't need to highlight VS.NET but simply
need to show or test something in the Framework, and saves your directories getting
cluttered up with five files where one will do. The only missing feature is support
for different code window fonts and sizes before I can use it before a large audience.
Look forward to seeing this one develop over time.
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