The foundation of the project needed a bit of clean-up and restructuring. The Big Refactoring is now pretty much completed, and with it, summer 2015’s feature freeze:
Feature-freeze until this is completed. We need to implement proper DI/IoC and make the code testable, if not tested. No ifs, no buts.
So we’re ready to start implementing the new features of 2.0. But before, we need to reconnect the pieces, by moving code from the 1.x “RubberduckMenu” and “RefactorMenu” classes, and into these “ICommand” implementations.
So, What’s Cooking?
Tons. The new architecture allows us to write code that is aware of the host application. This means Unit Testing commands can be disabled when the host is Outlook, for example (it seems executing VBA code on-demand from a VBE add-in isn’t possible in Outlook – ideas welcome). It also means we can write code inspections that warn about implicit references to Application.ActiveWorkbook in Excel, but that don’t run when the host application is Access, Word, or PowerPoint. Things like that, and…
Regex Search & Replace is coming. We’ll need a way to hijack Ctrl+F and Ctrl+H!
Smart Indenter is coming. The owners of this awesome add-in have graciously offered their source code to the Rubberduck project a while ago already; 2.0 isn’t releasing without an embedded Smart Indenter!
More grammar fixes on the way. This means fewer parser errors, more accurate inspections, navigation and refactorings, i.e. a more reliable tool.
Source Control Integration continues to improve, and early minor releases of 2.x will likely see a new WPF/XAML UI.
More translations have been completed since the last release: 2.0 will speak English, French, Swedish, German, Japanese… and every other translation we receive a PR for in the next.. uh… …6-8 weeks.
Shiny new UI. Docked gridviews are turning into WPF treeviews; the “Rubberduck” menu has been revamped, and under the hood, everything changed. Might as well make 2.0 look like as much change happened!
Code Inspections and Quick-Fixes that take the host application into account, giving recommendations tailored for a given host API. Also, some of the coolest inspections we envisioned as fantasies a year ago, are now possible to implement.
More refactoring tools like inline method, encapsulate field and promote local. The early minor releases of 2.x will likely see a new WPF/XAML UI for the refactorings issued in 1.x.
Something really good is cooking.
We’re also looking at implementing a more VBA-like Assert class, that would be more permissive with AreEqual and AreNotEqual than the current (C#-like strict) implementation is. Test results will be copied to clipboard or exported/serialized to XML with a simple click.
If you write some C# and would like to contribute to Rubberduck, note that our GitHub repository has a bunch of up-for-grabs issues opened, a lot of which are critical (i.e. no fix, no release) – the faster all functionalities work off the new command architecture, the faster we can deliver a pre-release…
Stay tuned!
Rubberduck News 