Where’s the MEF Harness?

It’s not up yet. You may have noticed. And if you downloaded what we’ve currently got up at AppVenture, you probably noticed that it was nothing like what I discussed on Hanselminutes or DotNetRocks.

Why is it delayed?

Primarily because I have had a very hard time drawing a line around what should and should not be in the tool. I’m still having a hard time of that, and the first version won’t include everything I want.

Also, MEF is a new paradigm. It’s been rough at times to learn to rethink and debug differently. This has caused a few redesigns along the way, and lots of consideration for things like the large number of assemblies. These are things I think need to be pretty close to correct in the first go round. This process would have been much more difficult without Glenn Block’s help, and I really appreciate his help and friendship.

I began many parts of this project in VB. I love VB. But the open source aspect of the future of this project will involve primarily C# coders. That’s the world around me. I am happy in C#, I just went fairly far down the VB path and had to do a lot of translation. When I release it, it will be mostly C#, with some remaining VB in parts I want to rewrite (the UI) and places where VB offers benefits (XML literals).

I’ve also run into a half dozen really nasty scenarios, both in my code and the framework that took a few days to resolve.

Parts of this have been raw research. What should such a tool look like? I’m convinced it’s by far the best way to generate code, but the devil’s in the details. I think it will make it easier for you and others that I worked though these details, although as I look back at the simplicity of many parts of the solution I have plenty of self-doubt that I just started out stupid.

All these things take time, a lot of time. And I try occasionally to have a life, although the people in it would certainly argue my capacity for setting this aside.

When? I hope next week.