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Monday, September 25, 2006

SharpDevelop 2 vs Microsoft Visual Studio Express

Monday, September 25, 2006 Posted by Ismail Habib , , 11 comments
For those who are thinking about whether you'd like to choose between SharpDevelop 2 and Microsoft Visual Studio Express Edition, here is a comparison table between those two.

Hope it's useful :)

Taken from here


FeatureSharpDevelop 2.1Visual Studio Express Editions
Code auto-completionYesYes
Code syntax highlightingYesYes
Windows Forms DesignerYesYes
Web Forms DesignerNoProvided with Visual Web Developer
Code CoverageYesNo
Unit TestingYesNo
Languages SupportedC#, VB.NET, BooC#, C++, VB.NET, J#
Help documentationNoYes
Plug-in supportYesNo explicit support for plug-ins however third party plug-ins can work with the Express edition.
Insert PInvoke SignaturesYesNo
Testing Regular ExpressionsYesNo
Class ViewYesYes
Solution ExplorerYesYes
Project and Solution File FormatMSBuildMSBuild
Web referencesYesYes
RefactoringsRenameRename, Extract Method
Go to definitionYesYes
Find ReferencesYesYes
Code generationYes. Not as powerful as Visual Studio's Code Snippet Manager.Yes
Object BrowserYesYes
Database ExplorerYes. Lacking support for many database providers.Yes
PublishingNoYes
Data Sources ViewNoYes
Add Data Source WizardNoYes
Document Outline ViewNoYes
ResourcesLocal onlyLocal and project
ActiveX Toolbox ItemsPartial - need to generate .NET interop libraryYes
Integrated debuggerYesYes
Targeting different .NET frameworksYesNo
Code Completion for different .NET frameworksYesNo
ReportingYesYes through the report viewer plug-in
Task ListYesYes
Error ListYesYes
Database Designer ToolsNoYes
Code conversionYesNo
Integrated NAnt supportYesNo
Integrated WiX supportYesNo
Integrated FxCop supportYesNo
Navigation HistoryYesYes
XPath QueriesYesNo
Incremental SearchYesYes
XML documentation preview and generationYesNo