SubMain News

SubMain acquires Exact Magic's TestMatrix, CodeSpell and StudioTools

Serge B. — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:32:00 GMT

SubMain will continue development of TestMatrix, CodeSpell and StudioTools; adds to Code Quality developer tools Suite.

Kirkland, WA, March 9, 2010 - SubMain announced today that it has acquired TestMatrix, the popular Visual Studio .NET extension for unit testing and code coverage, as well as CodeSpell and StudioTools from Exact Magic Software.

"I'm happy to place TestMatrix and our other .NET products in the hands of SubMain," says Duane Fields, Managing Partner at Exact Magic Software, the original owner and developer of TestMatrix. "Like their other acquisitions, SubMain will take good care of our TestMatrix and take it to the next level."

TestMatrix (http://submain.com/testmatrix) adds support for unit testing, code coverage analysis, and test profiling to Visual Studio, seamlessly incorporating these critical development practices directly into the coding process itself; CodeSpell (http://submain.com/codespell) adds real-time, intelligent detection and correction of misspellings to Visual Studio; and StudioTools (http://submain.com/studiotools) is a rich collection of Visual Studio enhancements.

"TestMatrix has a well-deserved reputation for making test driven development painless and convenient by enabling unit testing tasks an integral part of the programming experience, not an occasional external exercise," says Serge Baranovsky, President of SubMain. "It fits SubMain's code quality tools line-up perfectly and we are proud to serve the .NET community by continuing the development of this valuable tool."

SubMain has a track record for acquiring products, enhancing and integrating them in the product offering. Most recently, SubMain purchased GhostDoc and continues to improve and maintain it as a free tool for the .NET community.

About SubMain

SubMain, a Division of vbCity.com LLC, makes code quality tools for .NET developers. The company's flagship product CodeIt.Right (http://submain.com/codeit.right) helps developers across the globe to follow team standards and best practices, improve code security and performance and find potential issues early in the development cycle.

About Exact Magic Software, LLC

Exact Magic Software, LLC specializes in building native applications for the Apple iPhone iPad, and iPod Touch. The company has shipped dozens of applications, but is best known for its top selling applications Weather Radar, Business Phone Numbers, and Infinite Maze.

Media Contact

Wendy Cavens
Director of Marketing, SubMain
Tel: 1(800) 936-2134
Email: wendyc@submain.com

What's in the shop for GhostDoc?

Serge B. — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:25:00 GMT

SubMain Director of Marketing Wendy Cavens interviewed Serge Baranovsky and Roland Weigelt about the recent announcement of SubMain's acquisition of GhostDoc, which the company will continue to offer as a free product.

Roland Weigelt is working as a Software Developer at Comma Soft AG in Bonn, Germany. In his spare time he is the leader of the local .NET user group "Bonn-to-Code.Net" (pun intended) and also enjoys writing software as a hobby. Among his hobby projects is GhostDoc, one of the most popular tools for .NET developers.

Serge Baranovsky is President of SubMain. He has extensive programming experience and is a recognized community leader and founder of vbCity Developer Community. Serge is a Microsoft MVP and ASP Insider.

WendyC:: "To start with, please explain what is GhostDoc?"
RolandW:: "GhostDoc is a Visual Studio extension that generates XML documentation comments for methods and properties based on their type, parameters, name, and other contextual information. "
SergeB:: "What is also great about GhostDoc that when generating documentation for class derived from a base class or for interface implementation (e.g. .NET Framework or your custom framework), GhostDoc will use the documentation that Microsoft or the framework vendor has already written for the base class or interface."
WendyC:: "Roland, GhostDoc regularly made it on the lists of essential .NET developer tools, and was listed as #2 on "10 Must-Have Add-Ins" in MSDN Magazine. Please describe how you came up with the idea."
RolandW:: "I've always stressed high importance of writing good API documentation for my code starting in my C programming years as a student in the early 90's. For me this is also a check for the quality of a method - if I'm not able to explain in a few sentences what it does, there may be something wrong with the method to begin with.

With .NET and its long identifier naming style I often felt that writing this kind of documentation was a bit dull. Many times, in order to write an actually helpful piece of additional information, I first had to repeat in the summary almost exactly what the name of the method or property was already saying. One day in November 2003 I was so tired with documenting Boolean properties ("Gets or sets a value indicating whether ...") that I wrote a macro to help me with some of the repetitive tasks.

What followed were a few half-hearted false starts to turn this into a more general tool, until the announcement of Roy Osherove's Visual Studio Add-in competition in spring 2004 motivated me to turn my experiments into a fully-featured add-in that would be useful to others. In the end the hard work paid off; GhostDoc won the competition. Even though the feature set of GhostDoc 1.0 was limited (for instance, re-using existing documentation didn't make it until version 1.3), it turned out to be a success almost immediately."
WendyC:: "What has your experience been since?"
RolandW:: "Working on GhostDoc has always been both rewarding and frustrating. Visual Studio Extensibility in general is not without problems and even though things got a bit better with each version of Visual Studio, there were many roadblocks that took a lot of time to circumvent.

On the other hand, it's always amazing at conferences or user group meetings when people recognize my name, come up to me and tell me that GhostDoc is one of the first tools they install on a new developer machine. And last but not least I'm a GhostDoc user myself so I benefit from this tool everyday! "
WendyC:: "How did this deal come about?"
SergeB:: "Our CodeIt.Right product has a feature that enforces XML Comments where required and automatically adds a comment stub. Some time ago I demoed this feature to Scott Hanselman and he suggested it would be great to integrate this with GhostDoc and have the comment content generated based on the name. So I contacted Roland, we met at the last PDC to discuss the integration options; one thing led to another and I offered to buy GhostDoc. That seemed to me like an easy way to integrate! "
RolandW:: "The offer from SubMain came at a crucial point of time when I had to make a decision on the future development of GhostDoc. Other activities besides GhostDoc were already eating up my spare time, and it was clear that going open source wouldn't magically reduce my workload immediately.

Having full-time developers take GhostDoc to the next level seemed like the best solution. Serge and I were on the same page that a free-of-charge version of GhostDoc should be available in the future. From my experience of working with the people at SubMain in the recent weeks I can say that this was the right decision."
WendyC:: "Serge, what are the plans of how GhostDoc will evolve?"
SergeB:: "The future of GhostDoc starts today - we just released a new version of the tool with improved user setup experience, added support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and full support for Visual Basic. We also added IntelliComment feature to our CodeIt.Right product based on the GhostDoc algorithm - the version of this tool is also available today.

As for the future, you know, the usual product life stuff - bug fixing, feature enhancements. We have our own ideas and also are encouraging the community to give us feedback. "
WendyC:: "Roland, will you continue to be involved with GhostDoc?"
RolandW:: "I will continue using GhostDoc both at work and at home every day; and I will definitely keep track of what the guys at SubMain are up to; and I will do what every GhostDoc user should do - swamp them with feature requests! "
SergeB:: "Over the last few weeks of the transition our team has enjoyed working with Roland and we look forward to his continued feedback. We also hope that the community at large will do so as well."

SubMain acquires GhostDoc

Serge B. — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:15:00 GMT

SubMain maintains GhostDoc as a free tool for .NET developers; releases new version; seeks input from the community on product enhancements

Kirkland, WA, June 1, 2009 - An agreement between SubMain and Roland Weigelt, author of GhostDoc, will place future development of GhostDoc in the hands of SubMain. GhostDoc (http://submain.com/ghostdoc) is the popular XML Comments and documentation helper tool which SubMain will continue to maintain as a free product.

"I'm happy to transfer GhostDoc to SubMain," says Roland. "SubMain has extensive experience with similar projects and can use their development team expertise to evolve the tool."

Serge Baranovsky, President of SubMain, understands the importance of GhostDoc to the .NET community and welcomes ideas on the product improvement.

"We are very excited about taking over the future of an excellent tool such as GhostDoc," says Serge. "We have great respect for what Roland has done. The tool is very easy to use and it just works! We are committed to maintaining this wonderful free tool; we welcome the community feedback and suggestions."

SubMain has a track record of supporting the development community: publishing SmartOutline for .NET, the company's own free development tool; a free 100+ page .NET Coding Guidelines eBook; vbCity.com, a VB and .NET developer community, which it founded 10 years ago; dev.net.ua, which it founded in the last 5 years, the premier Ukrainian .NET developer community; and VBFeeds, an aggregation service for Visual Basic related blogs and publications.

SubMain would also like to announce today the availability of the new version of GhostDoc (v2.5) which improves user setup experience, adds support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and full support for Visual Basic.

Additionally, today SubMain is making available a new version of CodeIt.Right (http://submain.com/codeit.right) that adds IntelliComment feature based on the GhostDoc algorithm and offers improved and automated generation of XML Comments.

For more on the agreement, please see the interview with Roland Weigelt and Serge Baranovsky - What's in the shop for GhostDoc? (http://submain.com/ghostdoc/future)

About SubMain

SubMain, a Division of vbCity.com LLC, makes productivity tools for .NET developers. The company's flagship product CodeIt.Right helps developers across the globe to follow team standards and best practices, improve code security and performance, find potential issues early in the development cycle. SubMain is a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Media Contact

Wendy Cavens
Director of Marketing, SubMain
Tel: 1(800) 936-2134
Email: wendyc@submain.com

CodeIt.Right Beta 2 released - build 1.0.07268 - Share feedback and win $100 Amazon gift certificate

Serge B. — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:06:00 GMT

CodeIt.Right Beta 2 is out now - this is a major update since the Beta 1.

Our team is eager to hear your feedback on the Beta 2 version, as you can really influence the next stage of development. Be sure download the Beta 2 and to let us know what you think on the forums, and have your chance to win 1 of 3 $100 Amazon gift certificates to be awarded to the top three posts by October 31st.

CodeIt.Right Beta build 1.0.07055

Serge B. — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:22:00 GMT

Another CodeIt.Right update - lots of improvements, more stable, fewer errors :)

Read http://submain.com/blog/CodeItRightBetaBuild1007055.aspx for details

(Update: it's actually build 1.0.07057 that is available for download - details are coming)

CodeIt.Right Beta build 1.0.07040

Serge B. — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:41:00 GMT

CodeIt.Right update is available - improved Vista and 64 bit OS compatibility and fixes

Read http://submain.com/blog/CodeItRightBetaBuild1007040.aspx for details

CodeIt.Right Public Beta Released

Serge B. — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:23:00 GMT

The news I promised earlier today - we released first public Beta version of our new product CodeIt.Right - the tool that will find your code and performance problems, fix them automatically, keep your naming consistent and will guide you through most common coding patterns and best practices.

Read at http://submain.com/blog/CodeItRightPublicBetaReleased.aspx for download instructions.

Visit http://submain.com/cir to see how CodeIt.Right can make your life better (no kidding!)

Go to http://submain.com/tutorials for Flash presentations on the features and Quick Start guide.

And speak up! We developed the tool for you but it is up to you now how it will fit your exact needs!

SubMain Community launched

Serge B. — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:47:00 GMT

Today we launched the SubMain Community site. More about the site...

The old forums will be retired as we move their posts to this site.

There is one more exciting announcement coming out later today.

Stay tuned for the updates!

SubMain Community

Serge B. — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:09:00 GMT

The SubMain Community is where you can learn, share, and ask questions about the powerful developer productivity tools - CodeIt.Right, CodeIt.Once and PrettyCode.Print. This community site is to replace our current forums based on FogBugz software.

Using the forums, which requires an account to post or reply, you can interact with other people using CodeIt.Right as well as receive support from the SubMain development team and peers. We'll also post announcements here to share important updates about our products (subscribe to the RSS feed).