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JetBrains, the maker of popular tools for software developers, has released dotPeek, a new, free .NET decompiler and assembly browser.
JetBrains said the main idea behind dotPeek is to make high-quality decompiling available to everyone in the .NET community by providing it free of charge. The dotPeek solution comes with navigation and search features similar to those found in JetBrains ReSharper, the companys productivity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio.
This is the inaugural release of dotPeek as a standalone tool. However, the underlying decompiler technology has been publicly available for some time. Within the last year, decompiling functionality was included in the latest version of JetBrains ReSharper, as well as JetBrains dotTrace Performancea profiler for detecting performance bottlenecks in .NET applications.
“It is easy to get used to good tools, said Leonid Shalupov, JetBrains lead developer for dotPeek, in a statement. We are typically spoiled by the intelligence we add to every product, and dotPeek was no exception. Being able to easily navigate, search, review decompiled artifacts was as essential for us as having these features in a source-code editor. So, here it is: an intelligent .NET decompiler, which is also free for all.”
Key features of dotPeek include decompiling .NET 1.0-4.5 assemblies to C#; support for regular assemblies and executables, Windows 8 .winmd files, code archives, NuGet and VSIX packages; and instant jump to a specific type, assembly, symbol or type member.
The free tool also provides easy navigation to symbol declarations, implementations, derived and base symbols, and other navigation options. It also provides quick overview of code structure and hierarchy. And it enables connecting to symbol and source servers to fetch original source code, if it is available. There also are keyboard shortcuts for most actions in the tool.
JetBrains is known for its Java integrated development environment IntelliJ IDEA; the aforementioned ReSharper; TeamCity, a continuous integration and build management environment; and YouTrack, an intelligent issue and bug tracker.