I really like MEF and I really like proper IoC containers (let the flames begin). I do not think they are mutually exclusive, but best suited for different goals. I consider MEF to be a great way to perform macro level componentization. In other words, it is a way to wire up components that are physically in different assemblies, but it is not well suited for the micro level componentization in which I need to wire up my dependencies within my application.
Software quality is the great white whale of the software industry. We often seek it, but are totally unprepared to do anything about it. As in the tale by Melville, we can point out our Captain Ahab’s who are driven towards the extremes in ensuring quality. We also have the rest of the world that gets by not even thinking about it, except to say we know someone who knows someone that heard someone else talk about it in the dark corners of tavern once.
I have decided to dig deeper into an area of development I usually try to avoid – the client. Not just another rich desktop client, but a web client. For years, I have always kept myself at arms length when dealing with client technologies, especially web technologies. I have worked with them many times, but I have always preferred the server side. I have worked with nearly every Microsoft client technology from the Window C API, MFC, ATL, WTL, VB, WinForms, WPF, and probably a few others I can no longer remember.
Recently, I have received a few requests for some changes and an example for my Type Tracking Extension for Unity. This post is to address those requests. Of course, all of the source code for this post is added to the GitHub project Unity Extensions.
Part One – Extension Methods for the Type Tracking Extension The number one request I have received, and my own number one issue with using the Type Tracking Extension, is the verbosity of each method call.
Nearly every application I write has a project called ConsoleDriver in it. This project is almost always the same as it is just a main routine that create the class that starts my program, wraps it in an exception block, usually configures logging, and waits until I hit enter or CTRL-C to signal the application to exit.
Well, after the writing this thousands of times, or copy and pasting it probably even more times, I have had enough.
Inspired by Scott’s post Hanselminutes – This is usually the podcast that helps to clarify some topic I had been meaning to learn more about. Sometimes a bit too focused on the web end of the spectrum, but still a solid source on what is out there and what is coming up.
Dave’s Bus Ride of Knowledge Podcasts on .NET Development
|Hanselminutes – This is usually the podcast that helps to clarify some topic I had been meaning to learn more about.
A few weeks ago I read the blog post Git and command-line fear by James Gregory. He argues against the common Git on Windows complaint of poor Windows support. While I appreciate James’ position that this is not entirely true, and that most people do associate Windows support with GUI based tools or Visual Studio integration, I do disagree with his assertion that command line tooling is a valid use case.
In my recent post, IoC Challenge – Multiple interfaces to the same singleton instance, I posted an IoC challenge to the community. I also mentioned that on the Ninject discussion groups, a suggestion was posted on how to solve this using Ninject.
Today, I decided to try out that suggestion, and I have to admit, it is quite elegant so far. Here is the source code used.
First, the interfaces.
Edit: Updated link at GitHub.
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I have finally found an online code sharing site to post my open source code to – Hazware Unity Extensions on GitHub. I posted all of the source code for my Type Tracking Unity Extension there, and decided to follow the Ninject model for licensing – I dual licensed it as MS-PL and Apache, so go enjoy and help me make it better.
I have an IoC challenge that I am currently trying to work through. I have a series of classes that implement more than one interface, with the lifetime of the class needing to be a singleton, and I really don’t like the idea of falling back on custom instantiation code along with potentially custom lifetime management code to make this work.
Sound confusing? Here is the model I am trying for.