This release fixes 10 issues of minor importance, of which two (357 and 358) should be tested by the community before the branch 1.5 can be labeled as stable.

By the end of the month, I hope to publish the stable release.

Happy PostSharping!

-gael

I forgot to mention it in the last announcement: support for ASP.NET web sites has been polished and is now fairly easy. If you installed PostSharp on your machine using the installer, enabling it on your ASP.WEB web site project is done in two steps:

• Add references to PostSharp.Public.dll, PostSharp.Laos.dll and PostSharp.AspNet.dll
• Add the following stuff to your web.config:

<configuration>
 <system.web>
   <compilation 
        assemblyPostProcessorType="PostSharp.AspNet.AssemblyPostProcessor,                                    
        PostSharp.AspNet"/>
 </system.web> 
</configuration> 

More details in the user guide.

Happy PostSharping!

-gael

I am pleased to announce the availability of PostSharp 1.5 RC1. This is a true feature-complete release candidate; it meets the quality standards of a real release.

Upgrade from 1.0 Recommended?

If your project is still in development phase, and will be for the next 2 months, I recommend making the upgrade from 1.0 to 1.5 now. The 1.5 branch has to many respects a higher quality level than the 1.0 branch. The last CTP proved to be pretty stable and only little important bugs were reported. See the list of addressed issues for details.

Aspects on Serializable Objects

Besides bug fixes, this version brings a new extension point (ILaosAwareness) that enable you to make PostSharp Laos aware of other frameworks. Indeed, it was known that PostSharp Laos used to work badly on deserialized objects because the deserializer does not use the standard constructor. This constraint now belongs to the past: you can now use all aspects on DataContract or Serializable classes.

Thanks to this new feature, you can now apply aspects to serializable classes. You need to download and compile the add-in PostSharp.Awareness, which makes PostSharp Laos "aware" of DataContractSerializer and BinaryFormatter. If you have a custom serialization framework, you can make PostSharp Laos aware of it by developing a similar plug-in for your framework. These features (the new extension point and the WCF/BinaryFormatter awareness) were sponsored by a large insurance company. Thanks to them!

Roadmap

The roadmap of the 1.5 branch is clear: wait for reported bugs during 1 month, correct them, and if none of them required non-trivial changes, publish the stable release (otherwise publish a new RC).

Happy PostSharping!

-gael

Simon Stewart will be presenting PostSharp at the Dev4Devs event in Johannesburg, South Africa, on May 9th, 2009.

Good luck, Simon, and thank you!

-gael

If you want to show to the world you are a happy user of PostSharp, feel free to join the new PostSharp Users group on LinkedIn by following the link http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=1914476. 

Although our message board (http://www.postsharp.org/forum) remains the first choice to seek technical support, you may use the discussion facility to share or ask for experience to peer developers. Indeed, whereas our message board is principally monitored only by committers, LinkedIn discussions are loosely followed by all.

Happy PostSharping!

-gael

Michael Hall will be giving an introduction to PostSharp at the Chicago Code Camp on May 30th.

Thank you, Mike, and good luck!

-gael

I am pleased to announce the third and last preview of PostSharp 1.5, available for download today.

Its most exiting feature: it is twice faster than PostSharp 1.0! PostSharp 1.5 CTP 3 includes all bug fixes of PostSharp 1.0 SP1. Except performance, this release does not bring any new feature, but went through some refactoring to solve design problems of CTP 2, and documents new features.

For those who still use 1.0, here is a summary of new features of 1.5:

Reading assemblies without loading them in the CLR
In version 1.0, PostSharp required assemblies to be loaded in the CLR (i.e. in the application domain) to be able to read them. This limitation belongs to the past. When PostSharp processes a Silverlight or a Compact Framework assembly, it is never loaded by the CLR.

Lazy loading of assemblies 
When PostSharp has to load a dependency assembly, it now reads only the metadata objects it really needs, resulting in a huge performance improvement and much lower memory consumption.

Performance optimizations
The code has been carefully profiled and optimized for maximal performance.

Support for Novell Mono
PostSharp is now truly cross-platform. Binaries compiled on the Microsoft platform can be executed under Novell Mono. Both Windows and Linux are tested and supported. A NAnt task makes it easier to use PostSharp in these environments.

Support for Silverlight 2.0 and the Compact Framework
You can add aspects to your projects targeting Silverlight 2.0 or the Compact Framework 2.0. 

Pluggable Aspect Serializer & Partial Trust
Previously, all aspects were serializer using the standard .NET binary formatter. It is now possible to choose another serializer or implement your own, and enhance assemblies that be executed with partial trust. 

The next release will be a release candidate; expect it in 1-2 months according to the pace of bug reports.

Happy PostSharping!

-gael

Thank you so much to all of you who have answered the survey. You have been 144 to give very valuable feedback. This is just  unexpected and very encouraging.

The results of the survey are very positive!

• PostSharp is used by professionals in companies of all sizes, all over the world. Even very big ones!
• PostSharp is used in production software by at least 30% of users. I think it is more, since survey invitations were skewed in favor of recent users (because users were not required to register before the beginning of January).
• 98% of users consider that using PostSharp results in fewer lines of code and code of higher quality.
• 90% of users consider that PostSharp is stable

Maybe the worse score is community visibility: only 61% of respondents considered that the project is well visible... to which I want to answer: go on, blog about it, talk about it in your UG, invite me if you can! The web site gets 86% of satisfaction with some negative remarks, mainly due to the problems we got with the recent launch of the new Joomla+phpbb system.

Another point requiring improvements is documentation: 77% consider that PostSharp is well documented, but 84% wishes better documentation. The most important feature for next versions is better run-time performance and library of ready-to-use aspects.

And finally, 70% of respondents declare themselves likely to buy a commercial version. Encouraging - although there can be of course a distance between intentions and acts!

But better read yourself:

Download PostSharp Community Survey 2009 Report (PDF)

Happy PostSharping!

-gael 

If you love PostSharp and would like to have it presented to your user group, this post is for you. This is not only possible, but it can also be free. Read on, or forward this post to your user group's leader...

You can indeed invite me to your user groups. I can deliver one of the folling talks:

•  Addressing Non-Functional Requirements With Aspects: An introduction to aspect-oriented programming on the .NET platform. After a funny problem statement, I introduce some architectural views on AOP, then I compare different AOP frameworks for .NET and explain the technologies behind (as I am an engineer and not a commercial, I do not consider that PostSharp is the best for all cases).
• Towards More Complex Aspects Using PostSharp: A live demonstration of PostSharp. We start with a simple WPF application and progressively implement missing features using PostSharp: exception handling, asynchronicity, and observability (data binding).
• Addressing Non-Functional Requirements With PostSharp: a shorter version of the previous two talks.
• Contract-First Development in .NET: an architectural introduction to Design by Contract (TM) and concrete examples using available .NET technologies: Code Contracts in .NET 4.0 and validation aspects of PostSharp 1.5.

The talks are generally well quoted. I had a lot of speaking engagements last year (see the list). As I said, I come for free as long as the session is public and free. You will 'only' have to find funds for expenses. I can also talk in commercial conferences and give micro-training sessions in companies. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for details.

If your user group is too far from Prague, I can license my content free of charge so that you can give the talk yourself or integrate some slides into your own presentations. Details on this page.

 Happy PostSharping... and see you maybe physically!

-gael