HtmlAgilityPack in F# Interactive

While using HtmlAgilityPack (version 1.4.0 Stable) in F# Interactive (of Visual Studio 2010), I was unable to access attributes of nodes. In order to debug, I converted my script into a compiled code and soon was notified that HtmlAgilityPack requires a reference to the System.Xml, Version=2.0.0.0 assembly. After switching the target framework of my project to .NET 3.5, I was able to reference the required assembly and all worked like a charm.

Pex and unit testing

Everyone says that Pex generates unit tests. I am not sure if it holds. Pex knows what does your code do, but it definitely does not know what it should do.

Still I see three situations Pex can be really useful with.

• It can report you exceptions caused by inputs you have not thought of.


• When your code coverage is lower than you would expect, you may use Pex to see what paths you have not considered.


• When you want to refactor a component that is not covered with unit tests, you can use unit tests generated by Pex to ensure you do not break the original functionality.

VisualStudio 2008 dead and alive

My VisualStudio 2008 stopped from runnning. After started, it reported several problems with loading of its parts and then crashed. Well, I wanted to repair the installation, but the installation program did not start, even. Because of that, I could neither uninstall the VisualStudio. Fortunately, I found the article on stackoverflow that helped me uninstall the VisualStudio.

I guess the problem was caused by uninstall of DataDynamics ActiveReports. Did anyone out there experience similar problem?

Edit .csproj file in Visual Studio

I bet everyone had the need to view or edit the content of .csproj file. I used to use notepad to do that. Accidentally I've discovered that it is possible to do so directly in Visual Studio. First you have to unload the project. You can use the context menu on the project in Solution Explorer to do so. Then this context menu changes so that it contains the item "Edit .csproj", by clicking which you can access and edit the content of .csproj file. Don't forget to "Reload Project" after you are finished.