New Release with lots of new UI features

[Andrés]

Hello everyone!
First of all, let me tell you that I know I've been slow to respond because I've been working hard on this release and -of course- my day job. I will go through my pending email list and answer you concerns soon. Sorry about that.

This release is part of a major code cleanup. It includes all the changes that were in the nullable test versions plus a bunch of other things. A lot of old and unused code was removed and some things were refactored a bit to accomodate for some changes. Once we fix any bugs with this one I'll start looking at CSLA 3.5.

The intention is to have a few test rounds and then declare it the official CslaGenerator 2.0 version!! (hopefully within the next 2 weeks). Consider this an Alpha release. I'll be gathering feedback and release a Beta 1 next week.
Here's the changelog (I hope I didn't miss any changes).

Project Settings:
-Output Language is now on generation parameters. The per object setting is ignored as of this version (and should be hidden from now on).
-The "Objects to generate" checked list box is gone. See project panel changes for details.
-Cslagen now notes when the settings have changed and warns you before generating, with option to save.
-New option for adding a default criteria with no properties to ReadOnlyCollections and NameValueLists. (enabled by default).

Project Panel Changes:
-Support for filtering the list by name and object type.
-Support for different sorting options.
-Support for selecting multiple objects at the same time. This makes setting a value such as "Generate = True", or changing roles on many objects at once a lot easier. Adding columns to many objects at the same time is not supported though, you still have to do that one BO at a time.
-Since the "Objects to generate" list is gone from the project properties, the listbox now displays items that won't be generated in a lighter color so you can easily spot what's going to be generated.

Nullable Support:
-We now support nullables. Support for it can be enabled or disabled entirely through the generation parameters.

DateTime Support:
-We now support the standard DateTime data type. There's a setting inside the New Object Defaults tab under project settings where you can define your preferred date type (smartdate vs datetime).

Other features:
-New context menu shortcut for creating NameValueLists. Select a PK column and a non-PK column and right-click -> Create -> NameValueList.
-About Box. Thanks to Andrew Backer. Now you can stop wondering which version you have. :)
-The new object parameters window also got some love. I removed the grid view in favor of regular textboxes so that we don't have any more pesky focus issues. Also, when defining parent types in this window (when creating child collections), we get a little suggestions dropdown as we type.

Fixes:
-I have found an issue when opening older projects (pre multiple criteria) where sometimes generating sprocs could crash. This was fixed. Don't be afraid of working with old projects in new versions, and if you have any issues, post about the issues you have. I'm very careful with changes and I always do my best to try and maintain backwards compatibility.
-There's also a couple of c# fixes that have been reported.
-I've also fixed some other issues that I've seen in the forum and I may have not responded to.

Notes:
-The big changes happened in the ui and in the internal metadata. No changes other than a few bug fixes in the actual generated code.
-This is an early release and, while I did quite a bit of testing with different projects, you may run into bugs or issues. PLEASE, REMEMBER TO BACKUP YOUR WORK.

I hope that you all like the new features and download the latest release for testing. I'll do my best at fixing any bugs ASAP.

You can find this release here:

Binaries:
http://www.softwarethinking.com/CslaGen/CslaGenerator-20080723.rar

Source:
The latest trunk version does not have all the latest UI goodies. I'd like to make at least one test round before checking that in to svn.
https://cslagen.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cslagen/trunk


--
Andrés

[akhirudinfahmi]

Hallo Xal

first of all I'd like to thank you for this great CSLA Generator
exploring CSLA has become very easy

btw, I've download this lates binaries
but I can't find the executeable file
am I missing something?

regards
Fahmi

[Richard Griffiths]

Fahmi

the exe is missing. We'll have to wait to Andes to resubmit

Richard

> > Andrés- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Andrés]

:) That's why I need to stop publishing releases at 2AM. Sorry!!

Please download again. It should be good now.


--
Andrés

[Andrew Backer]

Ok, this is great =) I have one question though... I don't see these
changes in the repo, at least not when I build it :( Any clue? Rev
is 54.

//Andrew

[Andrés]

Yes, I explained this in the release notes:

>> The latest trunk version does not have all the latest UI goodies. I'd like to make at least one test round before checking that in to svn.

I'll extend that a bit though: The changes are extensive and affect a lot of things. Particularly the ability to select multiple objects. Before I commit that, I want to make sure it's good after one or two releases because if it's not I'll create a separate branch for working on that. That way I'll be able to release patches for older versions with the old ui.
I hope it is not necessary but time will tell. I hope I get a lot of feedback soon so I can move on to the next stage and start looking at more features.

--
Andrés

[Andrew Backer]

Oh, but it DOES have everything else though =) Sorry, I thought it
as all there except for the one or two UI things, but when I noticed
NO changes in the UI (ie, when I turned off "Generate", and when the
Gereated objects list was still there in properties), i figured none
of the other changes had made it through.

So really, the trunk has NO UI changes (not just goodies ;) I'll push
this to my users as-is then, from trunk. Sorry, I can't use the
binary releases for this, but I will test them myself.

As for old releases and so on, I'd say don't bother. Just keep one,
and don't trouble yourself with the maintenance. The only time I'd
say you might need to worry about the changes is if you break file
format backwards compat.

// Andrew

[dlutz]

Andre --

Nice job!

> -About Box. Thanks to Andrew Backer. Now you can stop wondering which version you have. :)

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! ;-)

David