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New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

hmobius — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:25:13 GMT

Just a quick note here to say that Tree Surgeon was one of the first ways I learnt about CI, good project structure, source control practices and so on. I think it's an excellent learning resource if nothing else and if it can be updated to reflect today's 'best practices' - whatever the consensus is that they are - then it's worth doing. I'd be happy to help out if an extra pair of hands is needed.

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

manderson — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:05:15 GMT

Hi Bill

It looks like a heck of an interesting project and I'm interested in doing it.

I've seen so many projects that couldn't put unit testing and CI together to save their lives.

Tree surgeon used to be my goto tool to show people how to structure their projects and the bonus was that the nant script provide pretty much everything needed to make a single task entry in ccNet and have them up and running.

My coding skills are rusty, as I've been doing Scrum coaching for the last handful of years but I've always been a heck of a maintenance programmer, so count me in on a T4 implementation.

Thanks

Malcolm Anderson

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 5:19 AM, bsimser <notifications@codeplex.com> wrote:

From: bsimser

Malcolm,

First off let me apologize for the patch. I totally dropped the ball on it. Not sure if I even looked at it. I know the patch system here doesn't alert people to submitted patches (or didn't in the past) but if I said I was going to look at it, I didn't.

A lot of things have happened in the past year or two and it might make things redundant here. This might be paritally why I sat on the patch (besides being lazy or not reacting to it). There are a few competiting technologies that might make Tree Surgeon obsolelte. So let's go over where things are in Visual Studio right now and what we might do about it from a TS perspective.

First off there's the T4 templating system that's now baked into Visual Studio. Scott Hanselman has a great post on it here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/T4TextTemplateTransformationToolkitCodeGenerationBestKeptVisualStudioSecret.aspx which has links to some tutorials.

From first glance at T4 (and to be honest I haven't done anything except tinker with it) it looks like Tree Surgeon. The templates look pretty much like what we use, except we're using code to search and replace tokens. With T4 it's built in.

Now having said that you still need to do some magic with T4 templates to make them work as they can't tell if you wanted this type of project or that type.

If TS was written today, it would probably use T4 as the templating engine instead of the one it uses now. That would eliminate a lot of the heavy lifting and probably make the system a little more robust, dynamic, etc.

So there's that.

Then there's the elephant in the room, NuGet.

I personally worked on NuGet with Microsoft and have a lot of passion for it. With NuGet you can just type something like "Install-Package ScaffoldApp" and have a complete application built out for you. Scaffolding is something that was introduced with ASPMVC but it's a fairly generic concept and basically what Tree Surgeon does. With NuGet, scaffolding is easy and you just have some scripts and whatnot combined with files (potentially T4 templates) and the system will build out for you.

Early on in NuGet I considered that TreeSurgeon could just become a NuGet package. However at the time it was still difficult to get something going (NuGet requires a project to start with so that was a bit of a show stopper). However some other scaffolding systems seem to work well (the MVC ones come to mind) so there might be an opportunity there.

The other option is a Visual Studio plug-in as there are a few that will create new projects for you (the HTML5 one comes to mind) complete with all the fixings.

In any case, if a new project was created in Tree Surgeon, I'm almost certain it should use NuGet to fetch the third party references.

Herein lies a bit of a dilemma with TS. For example when I start a new project I just go through the File > New Project and pick some appropriate starter (say a Windows Phone 7 application). Depending on the app platform (WP7, Web, WinForms, WPF) there are a set of packages that I'll just go and install (like Ninject or MVVM Light or something, along with some platform specific ones). It takes me 5 minutes but then I've got a scaffolded project that's ready to go (ala Tree Surgeon).

However two things come to mind. First off, these are installed with NuGet and some people still haven't jumped onto that band wagon. So I think there should be a decision here. Tree Surgeon requires NuGet. That way, the dependencies and whatnot for getting these packages works. That's one of the issues with the current codebase (and why talk of a plugin system was going on). The third party components come and go. We need a system to manage them without having to get a new version of Tree Surgeon every time a new build tool comes out. That plugin system was NuGet (except Nuget does it much better).

Okay, getting past that hurdle then the issue of how to serve up the tool so that a) its easy to get/use/access and b) it supports all the configurations that are out there. There are a *lot* more platforms than when Tree Surgeon started. TS was meant to be a solution starter so it would create your app along with unit test project and a client. The only problem is things like ASPNET MVC came along and already has the unit test framework generator built into the project creator. That sitll leaves WinForms and WebForms projects in the dust though and future of some of these (how many people start WebForms projects these days and where is WinForms going to be in a year when we have Win8 that doesn't support creating them in VS2012).

Pile on top of that the multitude of platforms available now. WPF, Silverlight, MVC, WebForms, WinForms, WP7. How many and how to support/include any or all of these in Tree Surgeon.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but the landscape has changed and I think Tree Surgeon needs to change with it. The question is in what direction?

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New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

bsimser — Thu, 31 May 2012 13:54:29 GMT

Posted this in a blog entry today here: http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2012/05/31/tree-surgeon-alive-and-kicking-or-dead-and-buried.aspx

Let's see if we can get some more traction on this.

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

bsimser — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:19:48 GMT

Malcolm,

First off let me apologize for the patch. I totally dropped the ball on it. Not sure if I even looked at it. I know the patch system here doesn't alert people to submitted patches (or didn't in the past) but if I said I was going to look at it, I didn't.

A lot of things have happened in the past year or two and it might make things redundant here. This might be paritally why I sat on the patch (besides being lazy or not reacting to it). There are a few competiting technologies that might make Tree Surgeon obsolelte. So let's go over where things are in Visual Studio right now and what we might do about it from a TS perspective.

First off there's the T4 templating system that's now baked into Visual Studio. Scott Hanselman has a great post on it here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/T4TextTemplateTransformationToolkitCodeGenerationBestKeptVisualStudioSecret.aspx which has links to some tutorials.

From first glance at T4 (and to be honest I haven't done anything except tinker with it) it looks like Tree Surgeon. The templates look pretty much like what we use, except we're using code to search and replace tokens. With T4 it's built in.

Now having said that you still need to do some magic with T4 templates to make them work as they can't tell if you wanted this type of project or that type.

If TS was written today, it would probably use T4 as the templating engine instead of the one it uses now. That would eliminate a lot of the heavy lifting and probably make the system a little more robust, dynamic, etc.

So there's that.

Then there's the elephant in the room, NuGet.

I personally worked on NuGet with Microsoft and have a lot of passion for it. With NuGet you can just type something like "Install-Package ScaffoldApp" and have a complete application built out for you. Scaffolding is something that was introduced with ASPMVC but it's a fairly generic concept and basically what Tree Surgeon does. With NuGet, scaffolding is easy and you just have some scripts and whatnot combined with files (potentially T4 templates) and the system will build out for you.

Early on in NuGet I considered that TreeSurgeon could just become a NuGet package. However at the time it was still difficult to get something going (NuGet requires a project to start with so that was a bit of a show stopper). However some other scaffolding systems seem to work well (the MVC ones come to mind) so there might be an opportunity there.

The other option is a Visual Studio plug-in as there are a few that will create new projects for you (the HTML5 one comes to mind) complete with all the fixings.

In any case, if a new project was created in Tree Surgeon, I'm almost certain it should use NuGet to fetch the third party references.

Herein lies a bit of a dilemma with TS. For example when I start a new project I just go through the File > New Project and pick some appropriate starter (say a Windows Phone 7 application). Depending on the app platform (WP7, Web, WinForms, WPF) there are a set of packages that I'll just go and install (like Ninject or MVVM Light or something, along with some platform specific ones). It takes me 5 minutes but then I've got a scaffolded project that's ready to go (ala Tree Surgeon).

However two things come to mind. First off, these are installed with NuGet and some people still haven't jumped onto that band wagon. So I think there should be a decision here. Tree Surgeon requires NuGet. That way, the dependencies and whatnot for getting these packages works. That's one of the issues with the current codebase (and why talk of a plugin system was going on). The third party components come and go. We need a system to manage them without having to get a new version of Tree Surgeon every time a new build tool comes out. That plugin system was NuGet (except Nuget does it much better).

Okay, getting past that hurdle then the issue of how to serve up the tool so that a) its easy to get/use/access and b) it supports all the configurations that are out there. There are a *lot* more platforms than when Tree Surgeon started. TS was meant to be a solution starter so it would create your app along with unit test project and a client. The only problem is things like ASPNET MVC came along and already has the unit test framework generator built into the project creator. That sitll leaves WinForms and WebForms projects in the dust though and future of some of these (how many people start WebForms projects these days and where is WinForms going to be in a year when we have Win8 that doesn't support creating them in VS2012).

Pile on top of that the multitude of platforms available now. WPF, Silverlight, MVC, WebForms, WinForms, WP7. How many and how to support/include any or all of these in Tree Surgeon.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but the landscape has changed and I think Tree Surgeon needs to change with it. The question is in what direction?

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

RolfW — Thu, 31 May 2012 08:59:09 GMT

Hi,

@Bill this is a great app. I have used it for a few years now and really love it.

@Malcolm I required some dramatic change to the templates that could not be done with the existing tree surgeon code (or could be done but with loads of work). So I wrote a script that basically clones a folder, renames folder and files and does a search and replace on non binary files. This provides me with enough functionality to create new projects in the format that I prefer.

If you are interested you can check out the script and how to use it on http://lazycowprojects.tumblr.com/post/24120400613/project-templating

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

manderson — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:10:22 GMT

Hi Bill

Text is a horrible medium for communicating passions.

The words used to express one person's commitment to pushing forward the potential of a project can easily be misunderstood as hateful complaining.

I'm hoping that my words to not come across as hateful complaining.

So what can be done about the lack of activity on the Tree Surgeon project?

I submitted a patch 15 months ago that is apparently still being evaluated.

As of this morning, tree surgeon will not build out of the box (on a win7x64 box with VS 2010 running go.bat crashes),

nCover is no longer a free product (and should probably be removed from the product),

there was talk last year of changing things up and creating a modular architecture allowing developers to write plugins. There were 3-7 people who were interested in that thread, but no committers responded to user requests for guidance.

Is there a plug into to Visual Studio that makes tree surgeon redundant? Is there another app that does tree surgeon better than tree surgeon.

If the answer to either of these is yes, then maybe we should shut the project down and update the docs with a link to that other product.

If the answer is no to both questions, then what can we do to breath life into this product?
What would it take to find a committer that can devote the time to make this active again?

I've got the desire, and would be happy to take it on, but I'll be honest, I don't know the full extent of what all is involved in becoming a committer. I've worked around open source projects, and understand some of the issues that circle it, but I've never been in the circle. Tree Surgeon is the only open source project that I've ever cared enough about to want to submit a patch to it.

What can be done to make this project active?

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

bsimser — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:04:35 GMT

I'm still the maintainer but nothing is being done to it right now.

New Post: Is there anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

manderson — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:32:38 GMT

Is anyone maintaining Tree Surgeon?

Assuming no, does anyone have any idea on how to get commit status, or do we just have to fork the code?

maLcoLm.b.anderson@PragmaticAgility.com

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

manderson — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:50:39 GMT

It's been a while since I tried digging into the code. I submitted a patch that had 2010 support back in February. That patch is marked as "being evaluated" but it is also available for download.

http://treesurgeon.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/patches

I'd like to suggest that the devs put out a stripped down version that provides support for VS 2010 and 2012 and has had the NCover support removed. Call it 2.1.

It would be a great starting place, I just don't know how hard that would be.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

Senf — Fri, 20 May 2011 22:30:25 GMT

Having this work with VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 would be great. Also consider VS2012 and .NET 5.0. Please also update the NUnit and Nant binaries to the latest version. And having the option to choose between MSBuild and Nant as build script would be awesome.

It seems NCover (open source) doesn't seem to work with .NET 3.5 or .NET 4.0.

Great little productivity tool.

Make it a paid application. I would pay $20 for it.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

goebeler — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:25:16 GMT

I truely hope a VS2010 Version will be available soon. I'll have a look at the source later tonight, maybe I can help get things done.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

manderson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:28:46 GMT

I have added a patch, I'm not convinced that it captured all the files that I added and the changes to the tools directory that I added.

Please let me know what I need to do.

Also, the pluggable architecture from the road map in an interesting concept that I would love to follow up on.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

manderson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:49:56 GMT

Ok, I've figured out how to make a patch.

Right now I'm going through a new download of the code to see if I can make my patch as clean as possible.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

manderson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:54:30 GMT

Yeaaaaaaaa, someone is still at the helm.

Hope you can help, I've never created a patch before and have no idea where to start.

I'm not sure how much of a hash I've made of things, I had to add a 2010 resource branch, and I think I broke the MBUnit part of the code (I had to add a second NUnit file to the test project).

But it builds a 2010 solution with NUnit, the project builds, the tests build, and the batch file works.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

bsimser — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:41:19 GMT

Sure, always open to some suggestions or contributions. If you want to submit a patch please go ahead.

New Post: Reviving Tree Surgeon

manderson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:22:22 GMT

I'd like to take a shot at reviving tree surgeon. It was last updated for VS2008 and I think that this valuable tool needs to be updated for VS2010.

Hopefully this will go straight to the devs and we won't need to fork.

New Post: Tree Surgeon Design Roadmap

bsimser — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:50:39 GMT

Hi Mike,

I'm very interesting in seeing your changes. Please feel free to send them to me via email (emailme@bilsimser.com) as a patch or zip.

Thanks!

New Post: Tree Surgeon Design Roadmap

MikeAScott — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:00:17 GMT

Hi Bill,

I have been working for a little while with an older version of TreeSurgeon and have made a few mods which may help add some of the flexibility that you need. I have been meaning to make contact and contribute these back for a while, but work pressures etc have so far stopped me.

Basically my changes are to allow template definition in the config file e.g.

</velocityContext>

<template name="2008"

description="Visual Studio 2008 starter project"

directory="resources\templates\2008" >

</skeletonDirectories>

</template>

<template name="2005"

description="Visual Studio 2005 starter project"

directory="resources\templates\2005" >

</skeletonDirectories>

</template>

and use a templated tree using symbols in the directory and filenames instead of sappling. I have modified the tree generator to walk the template directory tree and replace the wildcards with $projectName. An exaple tree would look like this:

templates

--2008

----go.bat

----{0}.build.vm

----src

------{0}.sln.vm

------SolutionInfo.cs.vm

------{0}.Core

---------{0}.Core.csproj.vm

---------CoreClass.cs.vm

------{0}.Core.UnitTests

---------{0}.Core.UnitTests.cproj.vm

---------CoreClassTests.cs.vm

etc

The GUI front end reads template entries from config and presents them in a dropdown.

This means you can add a new template by adding a new template directory and adding its path to the config.

Let me know if you are interested in the code.

Thanks for keeping TS alive

Mike

New Post: Nant config & sdkinstallroot

bsimser — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:07:45 GMT

It's a problem with nant not being able to find the 2.0 SDK on a machine where you only have VS2008 and/or the 3.5 SDK installed. The sdkInstallRoot key never gets set when you just install Visual Studio and only seems to get set when you install the 2.0 SDK. The two links you provided help.

The short answer and solution (if it is short) is to install the 2.0 SDK. I'm not a big fan of this because frankly, I have VS that will target the framework I want (2.0, 3.0 or 3.5) and don't *want* to install a huge SDK on top of something that's already working.

So I see that there are really only two options:

Install the 2.0 SDK
Change/add the registry key (as per the second link)

Neither gives me a warm and fuzzy but I think it's the only options given the whacky way MSFT decided to configure the frameworks.

New Post: Nant config & sdkinstallroot

jamesmc — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:53:55 GMT

With the very latest source, I had an issue where I kept getting a failed build with the following message:

BUILD FAILED

Failed to initialize the 'Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0' (net-2.0) target framework.

Property evaluation failed.
Expression: ${path::combine(sdkInstallRoot, 'bin')}
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Property 'sdkInstallRoot' has not been set.

This is because I don't have that registry setting. With a little research, I found the following helpful articles:
http://frater.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/building-net-projects-with-nant-unable-to-find-sdkinstallroot-keys/
http://www.timbarcz.com/blog/2007/12/05/NantSetupForVisualStudio2008AndNet35.aspx

With a little bit of variations on a theme (ex, I have sdk 6.1 instead of 6.0a), I was able to get it working.

J