Announcing LINQPad.CodeAnalysis
LINQPad.CodeAnalysis is a library that contains a set of .NET Compiler Platform helpers and utilities for LINQPad. Because it is so low ceremony but also has advanced functionality like debugging, data source connections, and advanced output and visualization, LINQPad provides an ideal platform for quickly experimenting, exploring, and working with the .NET Compiler Platform.
Introduction to Scripting with the .NET Compiler Platform (Roslyn)
Scripting support in the .NET Compiler Platform (formerly known as Roslyn) has been a long time coming. It was originally introduced more than a year ago and then removed while the team considered what the ideal API should look like. It was recently reintroduced into the master source branch on GitHub, though as of this blog post it still isn't available on the nightly MyGet feed or on NuGet. In this post I will explain how to obtain and build the new scripting bits (including on a system without Visual Studio 2015 - it can actually be built using only Visual Studio 2013), introduce some of the scripting functionality, and show some scenarios where this might be helpful in your own applications. I also want to caveat this post by saying that it may go out of date quickly. The .NET Compiler Platform is under heavy development and it is changing frequently, including the public API. While I wouldn't expect any sweeping changes in the scripting support at this point, many of the details are subject to change.
Random Polygon Page Backgrounds
You may have noticed that this site uses a randomly generated page background. To see it in action, just hit refresh. It creates a unique series of polygons with gradual horizontal shading in a random muted colors. I figured I would take a couple minutes to explain how it's done.