Brennan's Weblog

A Quick Fix with Snippet Compiler

Today I was stuck with VS.NET 2005 and the need to create a command-line utility to run on a box with only the .NET 1.1 framework. I was unable to get it to create a 1.1 binary for me. The only way to do that with a visual Microsoft tool is to install the VS.NET 2003 environment, which is a time-consuming task requiring at least one reboot.

The problem was the need to run a tiny console application on the Windows 2003 box which does not have the .NET 2.0 framework on it. Our web servers are using ASP.NET 2.0, but there was no need to put that Beta release onto the database server.

I knew the 1.1 framework was on the machine, so I remembered back when I found the Snippet Compiler which allows you to take a bit of code and compile it. It does not even require an install or reboot, so it was a great alternative to installing VS.NET 2003. It also provides a rich editor with color coding, syntax validation and it's own type of intellisense.

I thought that it would become useful to me some day, and that was today.

I put my bit of code in there to send email with a few command arguments and built a command-line assembly. And then when I deployed my little email notifier I also included the source file for the utility along with the URL for the Snippet Compiler website. Whoever comes across it in the future should be able to use that to do any updates. It is really a great tool. In a sense it is almost as easy as just writing a batch file, but I have full access to the entire .NET framework when I use it.