I’m at a new job, the codebase is mammoth, and nothing is documented. There are a variety of settings that you need to make to test various things, and the functional analysts (BA’s) are not so good at explaining things.
So, you end up going to developers and analysts to get them to tell you which web.config settings to make, which database connections to use for which environments, and what other little quirky tweaks to make to be able to get your development environment up and running and in a state to do work.
I’m thinking about making a “settings editor” that sits outside the gnarly main codebase as a utility, primarily for new people (but useful to everyone) that could make edits to config files and database records based on the kind of work you’re doing, and potentially revert them before commit (these items may not be set up properly with gitignore, or might be implemented inside existing web configs that aren’t set up to properly go between dev, prod, and test; so people typically change them then change them back)
The environment is rather locked down, often with multiple IIS express instances running in the background (there’s an authenticator web app – don’t ask), so I’m wondering how best to implement something like this for efficient and quick use:
A C# Gui, using Winforms or WPF?
A PowerShell gui that utilizes WPF or Winforms?
A very simple web-based application to do configuration that can reach out to databases and the file system? 4.a VS or VS-Code Addin?
Something else – like AutoHotkey?
What would you suggest for a “developer tool” that can be fairly quick and flexible, but also have a friendly GUI applied to it for new people? I’ve thought about extending whatever I do with something that maybe also generates Mermaid or PlantUML diagrams, but that might be out of scope.
Part of my goal is to learn a little more about the platforms I work in, as I’m still getting familiar with some of the newer features of C#/ASP.NET/.NET Core.
I think you’d be best off with a WPF GUI.
I wouldn’t recommend starting a new WinForms project at this point. You can, but it’s kind of a dead end, especially if you want to reuse those skills on other platforms.
You won’t find much tooling to help you write a PowerShell GUI. Same for AutoHotkey.
A web app has its perks, but now you gotta run a web server. You probably want something you can open from anywhere as an exe and just get the job done, and a WPF GUI does that.
Sounds like a bandaid over the actual problem.
Check out web.config environment transformations.
C# devs
null reference exceptions