Announcing PostSharp 2.1 RC 1

by Gael Fraiteur on 30 Aug 2011

I’m excited to announce the first release candidate of PostSharp 2.1, available for download from our website and from the NuGet official repository.

PostSharp 2.1 is a minor upgrade of PostSharp 2.0; the upgrade is free for everybody. The objective of this version is to fix several gray spots in the previous release.

This release candidate is ought to be of very high quality and free of known bugs, but needs to be tested by the community before it can be labeled stable. As required by the RC quality label, the online documentation has been updated to reflect the latest API.

PostSharp 2.1 has full backward binary compatibility with PostSharp 2.0.

What’s new in RC 1?

This release candidates contains the following additions to the previous CTP:

  • The design of architecture validation (PostSharp.Constraints) has been finalized.
  • Warnings can be disabled locally (for a specific element of code) using the IgnoreWarning custom attribute. See online documentation for details.
  • The PostSharp project property page in Visual Studio now allows you to specify which warnings should be globally ignored or escalated into errors.
  • Compatibility with Code Contracts 4.0
  • As an experimental feature, warnings and errors now come with file/line information. The feature must be enabled manually from Visual Studio options. We’re eager to hear feedback about this feature from customers with larger projects.
  • 17 bug fixes

What’s new in PostSharp 2.1?

If you missed the previous announcements, here’s a list of new features in PostSharp 2.1 compared to version 2.0:

  • Improved build-time performance: up to 5x faster.
  • Architecture validation: build-time validation of design rules. Read more.
  • Extended reflection API: programmatically navigate code references. Read more and more.
  • NuGet packaging and improved no-setup deployment experience. Read more.
  • Support for obfuscators: we now support Dotfuscator. Read more.
  • Support for Silverlight 5.
  • Compatibility with Code Contracts 4.
  • Improved messaging API.
  • Tab page in Visual Studio project properties.
  • Streamlined licensing experience.
  • License server.
  • Streamlined “getting started” experience.

Upgrade your Projects

To upgrade your projects from PostSharp 2.0 to PostSharp 2.1 easily you can use the conversion utility included in the PostSharp HQ application. Just open the app and click on “convert”, then select the folder containing your projects. References to libraries and MSBuild imports will be automatically fixed.

PostSharp 2.1 Roadmap

A release candidate means that we are confident in the code quality and is that all mandatory quality work, including documentation, has been done. PostSharp 2.1 is now the default version on our download page. We’ll wait a couple of weeks to allow the community to give this version a try, then publish the RTM or another RC, according to the feedback.

Note that the license agreement allows for production use.

It’s now time to download PostSharp 2.1 and upgrade your projects!

Happy PostSharping!

-gael