JetBrains, a maker of productivity-enhancing software development tools, has announced the general availability of ReSharper 7, a major new release of their productivity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio.
With Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8 release to manufacturing (RTM) set for early August, ReSharper 7 adds full-blown support for Visual Studio 2012 while preserving compatibility with Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010. ReSharper 7 also provides extensive tooling for developers targeting Windows 8 and WinRT, the new Microsoft operating system and runtime for ARM-based PCs and tablets.
Developers who are not yet migrating to the new Visual Studio will still find a lot to cheer about in ReSharper 7, JetBrains officials said. New ReSharper functionality available in all supported versions of Visual Studio includes a fresh set of real-time code inspections and automated quick-fixes; new refactorings, including the long-awaited Extract Class; more ways to visualize and explore the code base; and contract annotations to fine-tune ReSharper’s code quality analysis to application-specific conventions.
“With this release, we’re trying to make life easier for .NET shops aiming to quickly start developing Metro-style apps on the Windows 8 platform, said Ilya Ryzhenkov, ReSharper product manager at JetBrains. The sooner companies start deploying to the Windows 8 marketplace, the more revenue they’ll be getting from it. And we’re here to accelerate their Windows 8 development efforts. On the other hand, ReSharper 7 also brings great value to those developing more traditional .NET applications, with its new ways to refactor, maintain and explore code bases, not to mention improved support for specific languages, such as XAML, JavaScript, or VB.NET.”
Other ReSharper 7 highlights include an extensive pack of functionality for developers looking to create WinRT-based Metro style applications, new code inspections and contract annotations for more robust .NET code quality analysis, additional code exploration features for helping visualize hierarchies of polymorphic members and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) styles, better support working with Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight, and added or improved support for a variety of languages and technologies, including JavaScript, ASP.NET 4.5, ASP.NET MVC 4, LightSwitch and SharePoint.