Delta Engine Blog

I have updated my CR_Commenter plugin quite a lot last weekend and tested it all week. CR_Commenter v1.9 new features include full hotkey and feature customization, much better support for C++, Lua, Python and way better light-commenting features and more powerful and stable region features. Thanks to the many people writing me emails using the addin or even improving it themselfs and sending me updated code back (full thanks are listed below).

Download links for CR_Commenter v1.9 (2008-11-27):

If you do not know about the CR_Commenter plugin for CodeRush yet (I originally wrote it back in 2004 and still use it every single day), please read the article for version 1.8 from earlier this year where I also added a lot of features and this article of version 1.7 from 2006 or check out the original Commenter - A CodeRush plugin which helps you to comment your code article on CodeProject.net from 2004, which I have finally updated too (its about time).

To use CR_Commenter you need to install CodeRush 2.0 or later, which is a commercial product you can get from DevExpress here. You can also use the free DXCore component with a reduced feature set, but all the basic CR_Commenter features should work fine there too. Please note that there is also a recently released free CodeRush Xpress Edition, which should work too, but I have not tested it.

If you have used CR_Commenter before the first thing you will probably notice is the completely new options screen:
CR_Commenter Options

Let me go through all the new and improved features. Over the years so many things were added to CR_Commenter and since the options screen, hotkeys and feature set has changed so much all the time, it is hard to keep track what features are available in the latest version. To make it easier for new users to understand what you can do with CR_Commenter v1.9 I decided to explain every feature, which might also be useful for existing users as they might have missed some of the cool features before. All these features can now be enabled or disabled and you can set your own hotkey for most of them (if it makes sense). I will go through the same list as seen in the Options screen, which is also represented in the FeatureHotkey.cs class that has a lot of comments and explanations for each feature. As mentioned before all Hotkeys can be changed to whatever you like. Please note that the pictures might look a little different than your Visual Studio code, I just use a different theme and bigger font sizes, it is still Visual Studio 2008.

CR_Commenter v1.9 Features:

Automatically add comments after closing blocks with }
Hotkey: }
This is the most basic feature of CR_Commenter. In v1.9 you can now enable or disable it as you like. Please also note that you can now specify to only generate comments for blocks greater than a certain size (by default 5), which reduces the amount of comments generated greatly and is also the new default setting! Note: Since this is only parsed after pressing } it only works for C like languages like C, C++, C#, fx, UnrealScript, etc. For some of the newly supported languages like Lua (or VB, which is still untested and more or less unsupported sadly) or even Python that use identation for blocks you have to use Ctrl+1
Force Comment Block
Hotkey: Ctrl+1
Same as }, but allows us to comment whole classes and methods easier by positioning the text cursor on what you want to update. Use Ctrl+6 for always updating the whole file no matter where you are located. Can also be used for languages not using } for commenting or if you have disabled } commenting.
Add namespace for the current word. (Disabled by default)
Hotkey: Ctrl+2
Used to support automatically adding a namespace in C# 3.0/VS 2008. Not longer needed since VS supports it on its own now! This feature could be used back in 2006 to add namespaces in VS 2005.
Autogenerate region around the current block
Hotkey: Ctrl+3
Autogenerate region around the current block (method, property, constructor, etc.), for selections use Ctrl+R (default CodeRush hotkey). The most important thing about this feature is that it will automatically give your new region the method name and it will make sure all comments belonging to the method are put inside the region. Note: In the picture the #region SetNewValue and #endregion parts are hidden by CodeRush with lines to make the source code look cleaner.
Autogenerate regions for the whole file (all methods)!
Hotkey: Shift+Ctrl+3
Same as Ctrl+3, but will go through the whole file and generate region blocks for every method that does not seem to have one yet! You can also just go to the class level and press Ctrl+3 to generate all regions for all class methods. Since v1.9 also works with C++ and will generate #prama regions for you. BTW: Parsing the whole file with Ctrl+1 will also generate a includes region automatically for you.
Toggle collapsing and expanding current selection
Hotkey: Ctrl+4
Very useful to avoid having to use the mouse for these things. Please note that Visual Studio also supports collapsing sections with Ctrl+M+M, but that will only work on sections, not on regions, which is a pretty useless feature in C#, Ctrl+4 is much better :) Since v1.9 also supports regions if CodeRush does not parse them (e.g. #pragma region in C++), so you can now even collapse C++ regions.
Toggle collapsing and expanding everything at top level
Hotkey: Ctrl+5
Will expand or collapse all regions in the current file at once. First time pressed it expands everything, second time everything is collapsed, good for getting a quick file overview. Note that again Visual Studio supports collapsing all sections with Ctrl+M+L, but this really sucks because all methods, xml comments and everything else is collapsed too and expanding all of that again is a pain. Again, Ctrl+5 is much better.
Update all comments and xml blocks for the whole file.
Hotkey: Ctrl+6
Similar to Ctrl+1, but will not only process the current section, but the whole file. This generates and updates all comments in the whole file, updates the header comment and makes sure all Xml comment blocks are generated if missing (see below).
Update just the header comment.
Hotkey: Ctrl+8
Force updating the header comment, can be useful to test new headers and to remove any old header data. Also updates the created and modified timestamps. Since v1.9 changing or having different header comments now works, but it will also remove any existing header comments to replace with the new header comment if the format is different. Also check out the new cool options in the Commenter options screen, which allows you to specify seperate header comments for each solution or project if you like.
Generate xUnit or NUnit unit tests automatically for us
Hotkey: Ctrl+9
Generate xUnit unit tests automatically for us for all methods! All unit tests will have to be written and tested until everything is implemented correctly. Existing test methods will not be overwritten! You can either enable xUnit Tests (like in the screenshot below) or NUnit Tests.
Remove All Comments, use this to cleanup a file
Hotkey: Ctrl+0
Remove All Comments, use this to cleanup a file. It will only remove generated comments (after } blocks). Also nice for testing and cleaning up other peoples code.
Obfuscate whole file (removes ALL comments, xml comments, empty lines, headers, etc.)
Hotkey: Ctrl+\
Obfuscate whole file. All code will stay the same, but we will remove ALL comments, Xml Comments, empty lines, headers, etc. to reduce file size and make code harder to read. Not really a Commenter feature, but I implemented this for another app and it was easy to implement here too.
Autogenerate XML Comments
This feature will automatically add XML Comments to methods, properties, constructors, classes, etc. when the normal comments or generated. You can specify if you only want to generate XML comments for public methods or if you want to generate XML tags for all parameters (which was default on, but is default off now to produce much less empty xml parameter comments, which are usually not updated by the programmer anyway).
Other Improvements in v1.9
- Added cool new per-project and per-solution header comments
- New shortcut Ctrl+6 to just update the header
- Added lower limit for block size to reduce comments for small blocks (also works recursive)
- Added new features and hotkey logic, everything now easier to customize
- Easier visibility if plugin is installed and working (more visual events, better options screen)
- Fix generating comments for new files (messes up the using directives region), seems to be related to generating header comments
- Improve line length count for removing comments (good new standard: 5 lines)
- Fixed several problems in Format-Strings or SQL code.
- Added whole method identifier from the accessibility keyword to the closing parenthesis for region directives.
- Improved the CodeRush-autogenerated regions (Ctrl+3), make sure comments are not messed up
- New default: Do not generate Xml parameter comments (mostly not used for better documentation anyway, adding them yourself for more details is more comfortable)
- Added C++ "pragma region - #pragma endregion" support (thanks for testing to Enrico)
- C++: include includes into using directives region
- C++: Fixed header comment (project name could not be found)
- C++: Do not use xml comments, just leave normal comments!
- Fixed wronly generated regions outside of our plugin
- C++: Fixed #includes region, do not modify include lines
- Fixed region generation when CodeRush generates region before us!
- Fixed header in case some other header comment is used
- Added multiline header comment support for // /* */ -- and # to support all kinds of languages and comment formats
- Also force generate comments on properties (methods work, also test constructors)
- C++ allow Ctrl+4 and Ctrl+5 for C++ region collapsing (using visual studios Edit.ToggleOutliningExpansion and Edit.ToggleAllOutlining as fallbacks)
Older and Improved Features (from v1.8 and before):
- Fixed '}' inside string or comment, even if CodeRush has not processed the whole file yet (double checking now). E.g. the following string will not longer produce any comments:
  SQL = String.Format("UPDATE GC SET Status = {0} WHERE ID = {1}", Msg, ID);
- Supporting to generate regions again, but split up function names, also suppress CodeRush region generation with Ctrl+3, Ctrl+R (also suppressing VS hotkeys now) Better support for auto generated region blocks for big methods, just press Ctrl+3 to generate region (let CR_Commenter choose the name automatically, allow editing after pressing Ctrl+3).
- Fixed #if DEBUG in Using directives (caused trouble, was removed)
- Also added code to always remove #if DEBUG and #endif, especially at the beginning and end of the Using directives region
- Fixed double line #using Using directives issue when using directives got mixed up.
- Fixed long line commenter generation, will now still work, but not longer cut of any of your code. If you have long code lines (>100 letters), you can still generate comments for them and the Commenter will not longer cut anything off (you are responsible for formating the code).
- Fixed auto-collapsing of regions, especially when closing blocks in methods, the method should not auto-collapse!
- Checked support with other languages (which are at least similar to C#) like Lua, Python, etc.
- In Python/Lua, etc. we had to disable } comment generation and also use other comments (# for python, -- for lua) when using Ctrl+1 for header generation.
- Test all other hotkeys and make sure they do not affect the code badly in CodeRush unsupported languages (note: VB is still not supported since it is very different from c# code).
- Supports now any unit test framework, actually does not care anymore what you use, only the unit test generation code will add Xunit, but you can easily change that code if you want to.
- Options are now available directly into Editor tree of the CodeRush options!
- Refactored all classes, added about 4 new classes and removed 1 unused class. The source code is now much easier to read, to follow and to change.
- Remove commented out code, cleaned up the source code a lot.
- And finally applied the commenter to the commenter source code :)

I would also like to thank all the people that wrote me emails, use the plugin, all my colleagues that use this tool everyday too (shoutout to Enrico Cieslik and Henning Thöle, and also Fabienne Khöle) and the following people who have contributed with ideas, code improvements and helpful bug reports (they are also mentioned in the TODO.txt file for their specific bug report or improvement idea): Andy (mangledmonster), Andrew Jones, Gil Yoder, Alexey Romanov, Enrico (Judge), Ed Blankenship, Sven Heitmann, Jan Diederich, Rob Heyes, Dan Avni, Andy Jacobs and everyone else :)