CodeRush Xpress (completely free) is Announced

If you followed the Summer of NHibernate screencast series then you know that I use CodeRush and RefactorPro from DevExpress as Visual Studio add-ins to help supercharge my development experience (yes, I know that Resharper gets all the publicity, but I happen to prefer the CodeRush + RefactorPro approach to solving my extensibility needs, so there!).

If you read this post about the entire collection of VS add-ins upon which I routinely depend, then you also know that I make use of several open-source extensions to the DXCore VS extensibility framework that is the underlying abstraction layer atop which the other DevExpress VS add-ins sit.

If you took a look at the RefactorPro and CodeRush features and said both “I’d really like to use these tools in my own work” and also “but I cannot afford the $250 for the CodeRush + RefactorPro package or even the $99 for the RefactorPro-only license”, then I have a few things to say to you:

  1. How damned cheap are you (or your company) –?  Surely you can find a mere $250 to increase your productivity several-fold~! smile_embaressed
  2. On a more serious note, what I really want to say is ‘your wait is over!’

At PDC in Los Angeles this week, DevExpress and Microsoft have announced a joint-product offering that delivers many of the core and most-frequently-used CodeRush and RefactorPro features for Visual Studio 2008 for 100% free download.

Introducing CodeRush Xpress

The new CodeRush Xpress product offers a very useful subset of the more advanced CodeRush + RefactorPro capabilities.  Following is the list of refactorings that the Xpress product offers for 100% free….

  • Add Block Delimiters
  • Combine Conditionals
  • Compress to Lambda Expression
  • Compress to Ternary Expression
  • Convert to Auto-implemented Property
  • Convert to Initializer
  • Create Backing Store
  • Decompose Initializer
  • Decompose Parameter
  • Expand Lambda Expression
  • Expand Ternary Expression
  • Extract Method
  • Flatten Conditional
  • Inline Delegate
  • Inline Temp
  • Introduce Local
  • Make Explicit
  • Make Implicit
  • Move Type to File
  • Name Anonymous Method
  • Name Anonymous Type
  • Reverse Conditional
  • Split Conditional
  • Use String.Format
  • Use StringBuilder
  • In addition, several of the more valuable and frequently-used CodeRush code navigation, editing, highlighting, etc. features are provided…

  • Duplicate Line
  • Highlight All References
  • Increase or Reduce Selection
  • Smart Clipboard Operations
  • Generate from Using (TDD)
  • Quick Navigation Window
  • Quick File Navigation
  • If you combine the features in CodeRush Xpress with those available in the already long-since free Refactor! for ASP.NET offering, you can get yourself perhaps most of the most commonly-used features in the full CodeRush + RefactorPro products completely for free.

    For a better sense of what the Xpress product offers, read the MSDN Introduction to CodeRush Xpress article that includes many screenshots and walkthroughs of how the product integrates into Visual Studio 2008.  There is also some exposure to the new product demonstrated in the session from PDC entitled ‘Microsoft Visual C# IDE Tips and Tricks’ the video of which you can download here (warning, this link leads to a hi-res wmv file that’s over 300MB so make sure you want to follow it before you click smile_teeth ).

    Please buy the real products!

    For the record, I’m not suggesting that you use the Codeush Xpress tools in place of the full CodeRush + RefactorPro products; each of the full products offers a wealth of additional capabilities that are still well-worth the investment (and I’m sure that DevExpress is offering the CodeRush Xpress products integrated into VS for free in the hopes that you will want to update yourself to the full products at some point in the future), but for the budget-conscious that want access to many of the more-frequently used CodeRush + RefactorPro capabilities at no cost, the combination of CodeRush Xpress + the already free Refactor for ASP.NET download gets you where you need to go for absolutely zero cost.

    Enjoy~!

    PS: I make no money off of any sales that DevExpress makes, I have no relationship with them (other than my being a satisfied customer), and I receive no remuneration in exchange for this or any other recommendation — I just like to see people with great products be successful.