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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 30, 2011Popular ReleasesLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.22: New support for Windows Phone 7.1, 100% Twitter API coverage.Anno 2070 Assistant: Anno 2070 Assistant v1.1: Anno 2070 Assistant v1.1 Released! Features Included: Building Layouts for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Production Chains for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Supply Calculator New Features: The new supply calculator will tell you how many of each production chain you need to sustain the current population. Simply plot in your total inhabitants of each type and calculate! Coming in v2.0: Population Calculator Port from hard coded data to XML data Calculate by Residence Feature and some more secret ...Rawr: Rawr 4.3.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.131: This is a bug fix release for 0.9 that fixes a number of pressing issues. FixesBGN-1989 - User verification is not working on the latest release BGN-1988 - Send password notification does not include the actual password and throws an error BGN-1987 - Issues revisions stop being updated BGN-1985 - Search by issue id no longer works Fixed issue when user is not authenticated and clicks on the Vote link the user is redirected to page not found (wrong location for the Login.aspx page) N...QuickStart Engine (3D Game Engine for XNA): QuickStart Engine v0.23: Main FeaturesXNA 4.0 compatible Clean engine architecture Makes it easy to make your own game using the engine. Messaging system allows you to communicate between systems and other entities without coupling your code in ways you wouldn't want to. Entity/Component system allows you to make your own objects and customize them very easily. Terrain engine Quad-tree culling Multi-texture splatting Multi-texture normal mapping Smoothing and scaling Physics engine integration Uses Ji...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.2: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure SDK for .NET – November 2011. Updated BabelCam, CRUDSqlAzure, WPCloud.ACS, and WPCloud.SQL.ACS samples to include default ACS configuration to allow developers running the samples without owning an ACS namespace.VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.29: The new version add and correct many features : Add Medias list property to VlcControl Correction to implement Medias list property Add PlaybackMode property to VlcControl (Loop/Repeat/Default) Remove "--play-and-pause" option in WPF sample Add MediaList Interops Add MediaListPlayer Interops Correction on Interops (error) Add MediaSubItemAdded event on MediaBaseMFCMAPI: November 2011 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1029 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeWCF Community Site: WCF Web API Preview 6: Welcome to the sixth preview release of WCF Web API on Codeplex! Install WCF Web API Preview 6 using NuGet New Features/EnhancementsURL form encoding - Http request bodies sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded can now deserialize into objects and participate in content negotiation. Custom OData entity keys - The ODataFormatter now supports custom conventions for determining which properties identify an entity key. [ServiceContract] is no longer required on the Web API class definiti...Devpad: 4.11: Whats new for Devpad 4.11: New Import Archive Improved Save Dialog Improved Replace Dialog Improved Go To Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsHome Access Plus+: v7.7: v7.7.1128.2200Added: ShowTo Option on Resources Added: Basic Authentication Logon Method Added: Button on the Live Tracker page to clear logons in the database but not do a remote logoff Updated: jquery from v1.6.2 to v1.7.1 Fixed: Another attempt at fixing the SIMS import in the booking system Fixed: JSON Issues with the Setup Added: More DEBUG Events to the Event Log (note DEBUG not RELEASE) Added: Support for Week A Week B instead of Week 1 and Week 2 Updated: The My Files ...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 - Alpha: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 AlphaNew Dynamic Scripting Language : workitem : 7493 Fixes 1622 6803Widget Suite for DotNetNuke: 01.04.00: The following features/enhancements are associated with this release: Bug: Removed the empty box/white space created by some widgets New Widget: FlexSlider New Widget: Google+ Button New Widget: Klout Badge Sample Widget Script FileFxCop Integrator for Visual Studio 2010: FxCop Integrator 2.0.0 RC: Replaced the MSBuild Tasks installer to fix the bug of the targets file. FxCop Integrator is not affected by this bug. (Nov 28 2011) New FeatureSupported calculating code metrics with Code Metrics PowerTool. (Work Item #6568: 6568). Provided MSBuild tasks. #7454: 7454 Supported to filter out auto-generated code from code analysis result. #7485: 7485 Supported exporting report of code analysis result. Supported multi-project analysis. Supported file level analysis. Added the featu...Terminals: Version 2 - Beta 4 Release: Beta 4 Refresh Build Dont forget to backup your config files BEFORE upgrading! As usual, please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Updated the About form to include the date and time of the build. Useful for CI builds to ensure we have the correct version "Favourites" and "History" save their expanded states after app restarts Code cleanup, secu...MiniTwitter: 1.76: MiniTwitter 1.76 ???? ?? ?????????? User Streams ???????????? User Streams ???????????、??????????????? REST ?????????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????Media Companion: MC 3.424b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movie Show Resolutions... Resolved issue when reverting multiselection of movies to "-none-" Added movie rename support for subtitle files '.srt' & '.sub' Finalised code for '-1' fix - radiobutton to choose either filename or title Fixed issue with Movie Batch Wizard Fanart - ...Advanced Windows Phone Enginering Tool: WPE Downloads: This version of WPE gives you basic updating, restoring, and, erasing for your Windows Phone device.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.37: Fix for issue #16936 - CSS strings containing ASP.NET replacement blocks that contain the same delimiter character(s) as the CSS string cause the CSS parser to barf. Need to use the -aspnet:1 flag to treat the ASP.NET blocks as single entities. Added support for CSS3 @keyframes syntax. Added NuGet package support to the DLL project. Expand the -line switch to also optionally specify the multiline/single line mode, and the spaces-per-tab for multiline mode. Tweak the -pretty switch to be more ...Get simpler, simpler, and simpler: UI 0.1 Binary: Inklude: you can use it with lib, header and dlls. Uzing: you can use it by adding it to your project.New ProjectsArchiveBytes: ArchiveBytes is an archiving solution with rolling archive capabilities. Arduino Controller: Arduino Controller is a GUI to control and arduino wirelessly using: - XBEES - WIFI - Bluetooth All that is required is: - Arduino Controller - Your wireless technology - And an Arduino If you would like info I'm trying to put together sets that include: - Software - Arduino - And a wireless technology (your choice)Artesis - Studiegids MVC: Artesis StudiegidsAzureHost: AzureHost is a synchronization framework that makes it easy to deploy web application files to Windows Azure and keep them synchronized between Web Roles and Blob Storage. AzureHost is a fork of the Windows Azure Accelerator for Umbraco made more simple and generic.Codes Of My ACE Study: Activity-based Center ExpansionCoreGallery.NET: An extensible .NET-based photo gallery. Project has been inactive for some time and currently in very early planning/prototyping stages. Help is definitely welcome!Custom SharePoint Designer Activities for SharePoint 2010: This project adds to the power of SharePoint Designer workflows by adding additional activities that previously were not available including sending emails with attachments, custom from addresses, and much more. Created with visual studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010.Declarative command line parser: A powerful, declarative command-line parsing system in a single .cs file. This file is available as a nuget package (package id: declcmdparser) and can be easily included or excluded in your project.DevCow: This is a location for all of the community projects that help support DevCow.comejg: ejgFibo.Authority: a authority system based on nhibernate,autofac,asp.net MVC,jquery easyui and so on.Georgia Southern House Control: This is a semester project for a group of students at Georgia Southern university.JSAnalyse - Javascript Analyser and Dependency Checker: JSAnalyse - Javascript Analyser and Dependency CheckerLogger - logging for your .NET project using file, mail, debug output: A light weight yet competent logger for .NET with configurable output modules, such as log file, e-mail and debug log. Easy to add your own output module if needed.MetaEdit+ extension for Visual Studio: Visual Studio extension for integrating MetaEdit+ and Visual Studio. This extension allows you to browse MetaEdit+ models and use the main MetaEdit+ functions from Visual Studio. It can also automatically import into Visual Studio the source code generated from MetaEdit+. MonopolyPatrones: Proyecto de patrones de software universidad Javeriana ColombiaMulti-threaded simple Reversi game: XNA Reversi game supporting multi-core processors. NDuplicate: Finds duplicate code (methods) across a C# solution.Netduino-compatible embedded webserver: Embedded Webserver is a small footprint, multi-platform webserver implementation exposing IIS-like API to web enable your hobby project in four easy steps.Orchard UserReviewedItems: An Orchard module extension of the Contrib.Reviews module. Includes a orchard content part for showing the reviews that are written by the user of the current context.PivotViewer Extensions: PivotViewer Extensions is a collection of add-ons to the Silverlight 5 PivotViewer. PowerShell TFS Build Server CmdLets: A set of CmdLets for managing a Team Foundation Server (TFS) Build server through PowerShell. SABON: Simple Access Business Object Network. This is a JavaScript Library that provides quickest way on accessing HTML elements, and DOM this includes Object/Class Creator, Table Effects, Message Box, Object Pop-up, Email Notification, and caseed: Seed creates complete ASP.NET website from object oriented business model definitions. Programers serves programs? No... Programs serves programers, Yep! "Firstly, I think I will build a system with 90% solid functions, and 10% dynamiic functions, the dynamic functions is the flower blossoming from top of it."Sharpshooter: ????OOP??????，??????。Silverlight Front end calling WCF Service in Azure Web Role: I recently written a sample which has Windows Azure Web Role with Silverlight front end, calling to WCF service which is hosted in the same Windows Azure Web Role. SPWikiDialogFix: For SharePoint 2010: Fix to prevent users from receiving ‘The Ribbon Tab with id: "Ribbon.Read" has not been made available for this page or does not exist. Use Ribbon.MakeTabAvailable()’ when viewing wiki pages in dialog mode. For explanation and details, read the blog post at http://blog.furuknap.net/solving-the-ribbon-tab-with-id-ribbon-read-has-not-been-made-available-for-this-page-or-does-not-exist-use-ribbon-maketabavailable Written in C#, because you deserve it.Trinity Christian School Lunches: This is a semester project for a group of students at Georgia Southern University creating a software packages that allows a school to keep track of the lunch orders of students.wp7project: We`re just training...Zavida: C# learning curve.??: fff

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 Review

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  (This is my first review as a part of the GeeksWithBlogs.net Influencers program. It’s a program in which I (and the others who have been selected for it) get the opportunity to check out new products and services and write reviews about them. We don’t get paid for this, but we do generally get to keep a copy of the software or retain an account for some period of time on the service that we review. In this case I received a copy of Red Gate Software’s ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0, which was released in January. I don’t have any upgrade rights nor is my review guided, restrained, influenced, or otherwise controlled by Red Gate or anyone else. But I do get to keep the software license. I will always be clear about what I received whenever I do a review – I leave it up to you to decide whether you believe I can be objective. I believe I can be. If I used something and really didn’t like it, keeping a copy of it wouldn’t be worth anything to me. In that case though, I would simply uninstall/deactivate/whatever the software or service and tell the company what I didn’t like about it so they could (hopefully) make it better in the future. I don’t think it’d be polite to write up a terrible review, nor do I think it would be a particularly good use of my time. There are people who get paid for a living to review things, so I leave it to them to tell you what they think is bad and why. I’ll only spend my time telling you about things I think are good.) Overview of Common .NET Memory Problems When coming to land of managed memory from the wilds of unmanaged code, it’s easy to say to one’s self, “Wow! Now I never have to worry about memory problems again!” But this simply isn’t true. Managed code environments, such as .NET, make many, many things easier. You will never have to worry about memory corruption due to a bad pointer, for example (unless you’re working with unsafe code, of course). But managed code has its own set of memory concerns. For example, failing to unsubscribe from events when you are done with them leaves the publisher of an event with a reference to the subscriber. If you eliminate all your own references to the subscriber, then that memory is effectively lost since the GC won’t delete it because of the publishing object’s reference. When the publishing object itself becomes subject to garbage collection then you’ll get that memory back finally, but that could take a very long time depending of the life of the publisher. Another common source of resource leaks is failing to properly release unmanaged resources. When writing a class that contains members that hold unmanaged resources (e.g. any of the Stream-derived classes, IsolatedStorageFile, most classes ending in “Reader” or “Writer”), you should always implement IDisposable, making sure to use a properly written Dispose method. And when you are using an instance of a class that implements IDisposable, you should always make sure to use a 'using' statement in order to ensure that the object’s unmanaged resources are disposed of properly. (A ‘using’ statement is a nicer, cleaner looking, and easier to use version of a try-finally block. The compiler actually translates it as though it were a try-finally block. Note that Code Analysis warning 2202 (CA2202) will often be triggered by nested using blocks. A properly written dispose method ensures that it only runs once such that calling dispose multiple times should not be a problem. Nonetheless, CA2202 exists and if you want to avoid triggering it then you should write your code such that only the innermost IDisposable object uses a ‘using’ statement, with any outer code making use of appropriate try-finally blocks instead). Then, of course, there are situations where you are operating in a memory-constrained environment or else you want to limit or even eliminate allocations within a certain part of your program (e.g. within the main game loop of an XNA game) in order to avoid having the GC run. On the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7, for example, for every 1 MB of heap allocations you make, the GC runs; the added time of a GC collection can cause a game to drop frames or run slowly thereby making it look bad. Eliminating allocations (or else minimizing them and calling an explicit Collect at an appropriate time) is a common way of avoiding this (the other way is to simplify your heap so that the GC’s latency is low enough not to cause performance issues). ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 When the opportunity to review Red Gate’s recently released ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 arose, I jumped at it. In order to review it, I was given a free copy (which does not include upgrade rights for future versions) which I am allowed to keep. For those of you who are familiar with ANTS Memory Profiler, you can find a list of new features and enhancements here. If you are an experienced .NET developer who is familiar with .NET memory management issues, ANTS Memory Profiler is great. More importantly still, if you are new to .NET development or you have no experience or limited experience with memory profiling, ANTS Memory Profiler is awesome. From the very beginning, it guides you through the process of memory profiling. If you’re experienced and just want dive in however, it doesn’t get in your way. The help items GAHSFLASHDAJLDJA are well designed and located right next to the UI controls so that they are easy to find without being intrusive. When you first launch it, it presents you with a “Getting Started” screen that contains links to “Memory profiling video tutorials”, “Strategies for memory profiling”, and the “ANTS Memory Profiler forum”. I’m normally the kind of person who looks at a screen like that only to find the “Don’t show this again” checkbox. Since I was doing a review, though, I decided I should examine them. I was pleasantly surprised. The overview video clocks in at three minutes and fifty seconds. It begins by showing you how to get started profiling an application. It explains that profiling is done by taking memory snapshots periodically while your program is running and then comparing them. ANTS Memory Profiler (I’m just going to call it “ANTS MP” from here) analyzes these snapshots in the background while your application is running. It briefly mentions a new feature in Version 7, a new API that give you the ability to trigger snapshots from within your application’s source code (more about this below). You can also, and this is the more common way you would do it, take a memory snapshot at any time from within the ANTS MP window by clicking the “Take Memory Snapshot” button in the upper right corner. The overview video goes on to demonstrate a basic profiling session on an application that pulls information from a database and displays it. It shows how to switch which snapshots you are comparing, explains the different sections of the Summary view and what they are showing, and proceeds to show you how to investigate memory problems using the “Instance Categorizer” to track the path from an object (or set of objects) to the GC’s root in order to find what things along the path are holding a reference to it/them. For a set of objects, you can then click on it and get the “Instance List” view. This displays all of the individual objects (including their individual sizes, values, etc.) of that type which share the same path to the GC root. You can then click on one of the objects to generate an “Instance Retention Graph” view. This lets you track directly up to see the reference chain for that individual object. In the overview video, it turned out that there was an event handler which was holding on to a reference, thereby keeping a large number of strings that should have been freed in memory. Lastly the video shows the “Class List” view, which lets you dig in deeply to find problems that might not have been clear when following the previous workflow. Once you have at least one memory snapshot you can begin analyzing. The main interface is in the “Analysis” tab. You can also switch to the “Session Overview” tab, which gives you several bar charts highlighting basic memory data about the snapshots you’ve taken. If you hover over the individual bars (and the individual colors in bars that have more than one), you will see a detailed text description of what the bar is representing visually. The Session Overview is good for a quick summary of memory usage and information about the different heaps. You are going to spend most of your time in the Analysis tab, but it’s good to remember that the Session Overview is there to give you some quick feedback on basic memory usage stats. As described above in the summary of the overview video, there is a certain natural workflow to the Analysis tab. You’ll spin up your application and take some snapshots at various times such as before and after clicking a button to open a window or before and after closing a window. Taking these snapshots lets you examine what is happening with memory. You would normally expect that a lot of memory would be freed up when closing a window or exiting a document. By taking snapshots before and after performing an action like that you can see whether or not the memory is really being freed. If you already know an area that’s giving you trouble, you can run your application just like normal until just before getting to that part and then you can take a few strategic snapshots that should help you pin down the problem. Something the overview didn’t go into is how to use the “Filters” section at the bottom of ANTS MP together with the Class List view in order to narrow things down. The video tutorials page has a nice 3 minute intro video called “How to use the filters”. It’s a nice introduction and covers some of the basics. I’m going to cover a bit more because I think they’re a really neat, really helpful feature. Large programs can bring up thousands of classes. Even simple programs can instantiate far more classes than you might realize. In a basic .NET 4 WPF application for example (and when I say basic, I mean just MainWindow.xaml with a button added to it), the unfiltered Class List view will have in excess of 1000 classes (my simple test app had anywhere from 1066 to 1148 classes depending on which snapshot I was using as the “Current” snapshot). This is amazing in some ways as it shows you how in stark detail just how immensely powerful the WPF framework is. But hunting through 1100 classes isn’t productive, no matter how cool it is that there are that many classes instantiated and doing all sorts of awesome things. Let’s say you wanted to examine just the classes your application contains source code for (in my simple example, that would be the MainWindow and App). Under “Basic Filters”, click on “Classes with source” under “Show only…”. Voilà. Down from 1070 classes in the snapshot I was using as “Current” to 2 classes. If you then click on a class’s name, it will show you (to the right of the class name) two little icon buttons. Hover over them and you will see that you can click one to view the Instance Categorizer for the class and another to view the Instance List for the class. You can also show classes based on which heap they live on. If you chose both a Baseline snapshot and a Current snapshot then you can use the “Comparing snapshots” filters to show only: “New objects”; “Surviving objects”; “Survivors in growing classes”; or “Zombie objects” (if you aren’t sure what one of these means, you can click the helpful “?” in a green circle icon to bring up a popup that explains them and provides context). Remember that your selection(s) under the “Show only…” heading will still apply, so you should update those selections to make sure you are seeing the view you want. There are also links under the “What is my memory problem?” heading that can help you diagnose the problems you are seeing including one for “I don’t know which kind I have” for situations where you know generally that your application has some problems but aren’t sure what the behavior you have been seeing (OutOfMemoryExceptions, continually growing memory usage, larger memory use than expected at certain points in the program). The Basic Filters are not the only filters there are. “Filter by Object Type” gives you the ability to filter by: “Objects that are disposable”; “Objects that are/are not disposed”; “Objects that are/are not GC roots” (GC roots are things like static variables); and “Objects that implement _______”. “Objects that implement” is particularly neat. Once you check the box, you can then add one or more classes and interfaces that an object must implement in order to survive the filtering. Lastly there is “Filter by Reference”, which gives you the option to pare down the list based on whether an object is “Kept in memory exclusively by” a particular item, a class/interface, or a namespace; whether an object is “Referenced by” one or more of those choices; and whether an object is “Never referenced by” one or more of those choices. Remember that filtering is cumulative, so anything you had set in one of the filter sections still remains in effect unless and until you go back and change it. There’s quite a bit more to ANTS MP – it’s a very full featured product – but I think I touched on all of the most significant pieces. You can use it to debug: a .NET executable; an ASP.NET web application (running on IIS); an ASP.NET web application (running on Visual Studio’s built-in web development server); a Silverlight 4 browser application; a Windows service; a COM+ server; and even something called an XBAP (local XAML browser application). You can also attach to a .NET 4 process to profile an application that’s already running. The startup screen also has a large number of “Charting Options” that let you adjust which statistics ANTS MP should collect. The default selection is a good, minimal set. It’s worth your time to browse through the charting options to examine other statistics that may also help you diagnose a particular problem. The more statistics ANTS MP collects, the longer it will take to collect statistics. So just turning everything on is probably a bad idea. But the option to selectively add in additional performance counters from the extensive list could be a very helpful thing for your memory profiling as it lets you see additional data that might provide clues about a particular problem that has been bothering you. ANTS MP integrates very nicely with all versions of Visual Studio that support plugins (i.e. all of the non-Express versions). Just note that if you choose “Profile Memory” from the “ANTS” menu that it will launch profiling for whichever project you have set as the Startup project. One quick tip from my experience so far using ANTS MP: if you want to properly understand your memory usage in an application you’ve written, first create an “empty” version of the type of project you are going to profile (a WPF application, an XNA game, etc.) and do a quick profiling session on that so that you know the baseline memory usage of the framework itself. By “empty” I mean just create a new project of that type in Visual Studio then compile it and run it with profiling – don’t do anything special or add in anything (except perhaps for any external libraries you’re planning to use). The first thing I tried ANTS MP out on was a demo XNA project of an editor that I’ve been working on for quite some time that involves a custom extension to XNA’s content pipeline. The first time I ran it and saw the unmanaged memory usage I was convinced I had some horrible bug that was creating extra copies of texture data (the demo project didn’t have a lot of texture data so when I saw a lot of unmanaged memory I instantly figured I was doing something wrong). Then I thought to run an empty project through and when I saw that the amount of unmanaged memory was virtually identical, it dawned on me that the CLR itself sits in unmanaged memory and that (thankfully) there was nothing wrong with my code! Quite a relief. Earlier, when discussing the overview video, I mentioned the API that lets you take snapshots from within your application. I gave it a quick trial and it’s very easy to integrate and make use of and is a really nice addition (especially for projects where you want to know what, if any, allocations there are in a specific, complicated section of code). The only concern I had was that if I hadn’t watched the overview video I might never have known it existed. Even then it took me five minutes of hunting around Red Gate’s website before I found the “Taking snapshots from your code" article that explains what DLL you need to add as a reference and what method of what class you should call in order to take an automatic snapshot (including the helpful warning to wrap it in a try-catch block since, under certain circumstances, it can raise an exception, such as trying to call it more than 5 times in 30 seconds. The difficulty in discovering and then finding information about the automatic snapshots API was one thing I thought could use improvement. Another thing I think would make it even better would be local copies of the webpages it links to. Although I’m generally always connected to the internet, I imagine there are more than a few developers who aren’t or who are behind very restrictive firewalls. For them (and for me, too, if my internet connection happens to be down), it would be nice to have those documents installed locally or to have the option to download an additional “documentation” package that would add local copies. Another thing that I wish could be easier to manage is the Filters area. Finding and setting individual filters is very easy as is understanding what those filter do. And breaking it up into three sections (basic, by object, and by reference) makes sense. But I could easily see myself running a long profiling session and forgetting that I had set some filter a long while earlier in a different filter section and then spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out why some problem that was clearly visible in the data wasn’t showing up in, e.g. the instance list before remembering to check all the filters for that one setting that was only culling a few things from view. Some sort of indicator icon next to the filter section names that appears you have at least one filter set in that area would be a nice visual clue to remind me that “oh yeah, I told it to only show objects on the Gen 2 heap! That’s why I’m not seeing those instances of the SuperMagic class!” Something that would be nice (but that Red Gate cannot really do anything about) would be if this could be used in Windows Phone 7 development. If Microsoft and Red Gate could work together to make this happen (even if just on the WP7 emulator), that would be amazing. Especially given the memory constraints that apps and games running on mobile devices need to work within, a good memory profiler would be a phenomenally helpful tool. If anyone at Microsoft reads this, it’d be really great if you could make something like that happen. Perhaps even a (subsidized) custom version just for WP7 development. (For XNA games, of course, you can create a Windows version of the game and use ANTS MP on the Windows version in order to get a better picture of your memory situation. For Silverlight on WP7, though, there’s quite a bit of educated guess work and WeakReference creation followed by forced collections in order to find the source of a memory problem.) The only other thing I found myself wanting was a “Back” button. Between my Windows Phone 7, Zune, and other things, I’ve grown very used to having a “back stack” that lets me just navigate back to where I came from. The ANTS MP interface is surprisingly easy to use given how much it lets you do, and once you start using it for any amount of time, you learn all of the different areas such that you know where to go. And it does remember the state of the areas you were previously in, of course. So if you go to, e.g., the Instance Retention Graph from the Class List and then return back to the Class List, it will remember which class you had selected and all that other state information. Still, a “Back” button would be a welcome addition to a future release. Bottom Line ANTS Memory Profiler is not an inexpensive tool. But my time is valuable. I can easily see ANTS MP saving me enough time tracking down memory problems to justify it on a cost basis. More importantly to me, knowing what is happening memory-wise in my programs and having the confidence that my code doesn’t have any hidden time bombs in it that will cause it to OOM if I leave it running for longer than I do when I spin it up real quickly for debugging or just to see how a new feature looks and feels is a good feeling. It’s a feeling that I like having and want to continue to have. I got the current version for free in order to review it. Having done so, I’ve now added it to my must-have tools and will gladly lay out the money for the next version when it comes out. It has a 14 day free trial, so if you aren’t sure if it’s right for you or if you think it seems interesting but aren’t really sure if it’s worth shelling out the money for it, give it a try.

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