Freeware tools for Developers.

After my last post, about a tool that I use often, I like to put here a list of tools I use daily in my development environment. I'm a freeware software fan, likewise with good development tools and some gadgets.

Source Control:

Tortoise / Subversion Source Control
A Subversion client, implemented as a windows shell extension. It is really easy to use Revision
control / version control / source control software for Windows. Since it's not integrated with a specific IDE you can use it with whatever
development tools you like. Tortoise SVN is free to use.

Some Visual Studio AddIns:

Regionerate
It’s an open-source tool for developers and team leaders that allows you to automatically apply layout rules (regions) on C# code.

ProfileSharp
It’s an open source .NET code, performance and memory profiling software.
It helps pinpoint performance bottlenecks in .NET code and optimize memory usage.

Source Analysis
Also known as StyleCop, analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of best practice style and consistency rules. The differences between the "Source Analysis style" and the "Framework Design Guidelines style" are relatively minor. One of the biggest differences is that the framework style prefixes private and internal fields with an underscore, while Source Analysis style omits the underscore and instead prefixes all class members with this.

Other Development Applications

MSBuildShellExtension
Lets you build .NET projects without ever opening Visual Studio or the command prompt. MSBuild targets can be executed from your favourite file system tool like Windows Explorer or Total Commander. The possibility to extend MSBuildShellExtension with your own targets and editors, makes it a very flexible and useful tool for all .NET developers.

DebugView
It’s an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It’s capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output, so you don't need a debugger to catch the debug output your applications or device drivers generate, nor do you need to modify your applications or drivers to use non-standard debug output APIs.

SOAPSonar
It enables users to perform functional and load testing as well as vulnerability assessment to ensure that the Web Services are reliable and robust before they are deployed.

SQL Server Management Studio
Consistent management across all SQL Server Editions.

Development Documentation

Code Signature Add-In for VST
Put a signature header in every code file (I will talk about this one later ;-) )

GhostDoc Free add-in for Visual Studio
Automatically generates XML documentation comments. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.

Sandcastle Documentation
Console compiler application for managed class libraries, that will output your comments/documentation from Microsoft. Used for creating MSDN style documentation from .NET assemblies and their associated XML comments files. The current version is the March 2007 CTP. It is command line based and has no GUI front-end, project management features, or automated build process.

Sandcastle Help File Builder
Provide a graphical and command line based tool to build a help file in an automated fashion way.

Htmlhelp or VST SDK (Microsoft HTML HELP Workshop - compiler for .CHM files).


Utilities Applications

PSPad
Freeware programmer's editor for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Works with various programming environments, highlighted syntax in source code, handles plain text, rich text formatting functions and user extension capabilities.

WinMerge Open Source (GPL)
Visual text file differencing and merging tool for Windows. It is highly useful for determine what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

Launchy
Free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes.

Unlocker
It’s an explorer extension to delete, rename, move a file that is locked. With a simple right-click of the mouse on a file or folder, get rid of error message such as error deleting file or folder, cannot delete folder: it is used by another person or program.

CopyPath
This simple yet effective application quickly captures the full path of a folder or file and places it on your Clipboard for easy access. CopyPath doesn't have a dedicated interface, but using it is as simple as right-clicking a folder or file.

Junction Link Magic
It’s an utility that lets you create junction points (like symbolic links) with Windows 2000, XP or 2003. There is a beta version for Windows Vista and Server 2008.

PuTTY
It’s a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

ZipGenius
Free software for Windows that lets you compress files to almost any kind of archive. Supports more than 20 compressed archive formats, including CD/DVD-ROM image files in ISO9660 standard, including RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent 7-zip. Now can precompress executable files going to be added to a ZIP archive through the UPX compressor.

XMLPad
It’s based on the unique custom-developed XML parser engine designed in accordance with the published W3C standards


I hope you find some usefull. If you have another ones you can advice of, please be my guest, always trying to find and work with better freeware software.