CodeTidy Kickoff

Processing the code in a C# code file can be done in a few ways. Visual Studio has an extensibility/automation model that allows access to projects, solutions, modules, classes, code etc. as object collections; which would seem to be ideal for what I have in mind - not having to parse the stuff oneself.

However anytime I have looked at this in the past as a possible route for achieving the task of manipulating the raw code in a file I have come up against obstacles - most notably no support for locating and dealing with regions, some comments, namespace import (i.e. using) statements etc.

If I am to sort/arrange code without mucking up the containment of regions or orphaning comment lines, then I have to know about these parts of the text content of a code file and be able to manipulate them in the same way as the methods, properties etc. that are available as objects in the extensibility/automation model.

Parsing code files as raw text and recognising these 'contructs' manually seems like re-inventing the wheel and the sort of activity better done by people with more mathematical minds than mine, who thrive on lexical parser theory and and all that grammar/token recognition stuff.

So, what to do..? It would be nice to use the automation/extensibility model and fill in the gaps with a bit of manual parsing I suppose, but that leads to the need to effectively maintain my own 'meta-model' of the code being analysed that references/synchronises with the VS model but supplements it with information about the association of things like regions. Plus I need to take a fresh look at the VS model as I guess it has moved on and improved since I last looked at it (VS 2003) - though I'm pretty sure it still doesn't provide exposure of things like regions.

Further thinking required.

Pet Projects

I am a big fan of pet projects; by which I mean hobby code that I have developed and continually re-develop in order to learn new and newer versions of developer technology.

I have done this in the past with a Windows wallpaper changer taskbar app and a piano scale and chord finder utility. These have gone through various VB, Delphi and C# versions. Each time the familiarity with the 'requirements' means that I can use them as a comfortable 'problem-space' in which to try to utilise new features and rework code.

I am just about to start a new pet project - this time to sort code (initially C#) in code files according to configurable rules. I've always wanted a utility that would allow me to organise/group code in order of construct type (e.g. properties, ENUM, methods etc.) or access (private, protected, public etc.), taking account of regions and respecting comments and areas like namespace containment of imports (using statements) and allowing alphabetic sorting within these groupings.

Eventually I hope to make this an add-in to Visual Studio that will help me to organise my code in place and at the same time master the dark art of VS automation...so CodeTidy is born.