Primordial Ooze

Feel the code

I decided to do all of my work using command-line tools and the TextPad editor. I came into programming using command-line tools and I suppose old habits die hard. Granted, the Visual Studio .NET IDE is terrific. I plan on using it once I’ve felt enough code, but naked code seems the best way to learn how everything works.

The first step was to get syntax highlighting for C# source working in TextPad. Although I’ve been aiming at naked coding without the IDE, a little lipstick goes a long way. TextPad has syntax highlighters for most languages. You can get a C# Syntax File on the TextPad web site. Once you download the file, you simply need to copy the file to a Sample subdirectory off your TextPad installation directory.

Launching the command-line tools from within TextPad was next on my list of required amenities. The main impetus for my effort in this area was the ability to double-click on a compiler error and be brought to the offending line of source. Yeh, my efforts are beginning to sound like I really miss the IDE. I could compile in a command-prompt, but I’m not a barbarian for pete’s sake.

I learned quite a bit about assemblies and the way they’re loaded by the C# compiler. My initial programs were simple, so the default core assemblies were all I needed to compile and go. However, as I started requiring the various managed DirectX components, I needed to find these on my hard drive. I did find them, but they were buried deep within my C:\Windows directory. I found the ones I needed and copied them to C:\SharedAssemblies. This made my command-line simple. I added the

/lib:C:\SharedAssemblies

option to the C# compiler and I was able to refer to the managed DirectX components via a simpler syntax: /r:DirectX.Drawing (or whatever), without re-specifying the entire path.

I suppose I could have utilized the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) but since the default install didn’t already install these there, I got scared and punted on the issue for now.