Editor's note: Downloadable Free Tools for .NET Developers spreadsheet now includes 70 free tools. Zip file includes table as an Excel spreadsheet and .htm file."It's free...!" That tantalizing descriptor is a tried-and-true tactic for drawing attention to a product or a company. Everyone loves free stuff, and .NET developers are no exception. Indeed, the .NET and ASP.NET developer world is an exceptional treasure trove of software development tools and other useful free resources. For instance, most developers are familiar with
CodePlex, the Microsoft-hosted .NET community code site as well as open source code-sharing sites, such as
SourceForge.net. (See Richard Campbell's editorial "
Free Tools? Don't Forget About Microsoft," for his list of notable CodePlex projects.)
But there are other sources of free developer tools. Many free tools are community projects, authored by individual developers or multiple contributors—such as Don Ho's Notepad++ editor and the Firebug Firefox add-on. And third-party developer software vendors are another rich resource for free tools; a number of vendors, offer either scaled-down free versions of their mainline products—such as Developer Express's CodeRush Xpress, Telerik's JustMock, Kentico CMS for ASP.NET Free Edition, and Atalasoft's DotImage Photo—or tools that perform a specific task, such as Devart's T4 template editor and JetBrains' dotPeek.
This article presents a cross-section of some of the most popular and useful free software development tools available. The vast majority of the tools listed in the table are geared toward .NET development, but there are a few others thrown in for those who are doing cross-platform development.
50 tools are listed in nine categories that represent a cross-section of the types of tools most widely available:
- Code-generation/editing/templates
- Content management systems (CMSs)
- Controls/Components
- Data access and Object-Relational Mapping (ORM)
- Documentation & Project Management
- Performance Analysis/Management
- Software Configuration Management/Version Control
- Testing and Debugging
- Visual Studio add-ins
There's also a "miscellaneous" category listing tools that don't quite fit in any of the other categories. Some of the tools listed were suggested by
DevProConnections authors (more about our authors' favorite tools in the next section). Others came from the
DevProConnections "files": press releases and briefings with tool providers. Tools were selected with an eye toward including those that .NET developers would find most useful. In other words, even though a tool is "free," it still must provide value and practical benefit to developers.
DevProConnections Authors' Favorite Free Tools
DevProConnections' authors are first and foremost developer professionals, who spend much of their time developing applications and managing and troubleshooting development projects for their clients and employers in the "real world." I asked some of them to list the free tools they regularly use in their projects. Here is a list of some of their favorites.
Michael K. Campbell,
DevProConnections contributing author and columnist and
SQL Server Magazine contributing editor and president of OverAchiever Productions
"
Ionic.zip: I can't say enough about how awesome Ionic.zip is. If you're a .NET developer (or a heavy BI/SSIS developer), then you've likely run across the need to manage compression from within your applications or solutions. I've looked at gobs of different solutions or offerings (free and otherwise) and would happily pay a fortune for Ionic.Zip. Only I don't have to because it's a completely free library that's hosted on CodePlex.com.