Building C# Applications (Msn web hosting) As a C# programmer, you
Building C# Applications As a C# programmer, you may choose among numerous tools to build .NET applications. The point of this chapter is to provide a tour of various .NET development options, including, of course, Visual Studio 2005. The chapter opens, however, with an examination of working with the C# command-line compiler, csc.exe, and the simplest of all text editors, Notepad (notepad.exe). Along the way, you will also learn about the process of debugging .NET assemblies at the command line using cordbg.exe. Once you become comfortable compiling and debugging assemblies IDE-free, you will then examine how the TextPad application allows you to edit and compile C# source code files in a (slightly) more sophisticated manner. While you could work through this entire text using nothing other than csc.exe and Notepad/ TextPad, I d bet you are also interested in working with feature-rich integrated development environments (IDEs). To this end, you will be introduced to an open source IDE named SharpDevelop. This IDE rivals the functionality of many commercial .NET development environments (and it s free!). After briefly examining the Visual C# 2005 Express IDE, you will turn your attention to Visual Studio 2005. This chapter wraps up with a quick tour of a number of complementary .NET development tools (many of which are open source) and describes where to obtain them. Installing the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK Before you are able to build .NET applications using the C# programming language and the .NET Framework, the first step is to install the freely downloadable .NET Framework 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK). Do be aware that the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK is automatically installed with Visual Studio 2005 as well as Visual C# 2005 Express; therefore, if you plan to use either of these IDEs, there is no need to manually download or install this software package. If you are not developing with Visual Studio 2005/Visual C# 2005 Express, navigate to http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework and search for .NET Framework 2.0 SDK . Once you have located the appropriate page, download setup.exe and save it to a location on your hard drive. At this point, double-click the executable to install the software. After the installation process has completed, your development machine will not only be configured with the necessary .NET infrastructure, but also now contain numerous development tools, a very robust help system, sample code, and tutorials, as well as various white papers. By default, the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK is installed under C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 8SDKv2.0. Here you will find StartHere.htm, which (as the name suggests) serves as an entry point to other related documentation. Table 2-1 describes the details behind some of the core subdirectories off the installation root. 33 C H A P T E R 2
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