I was contacted out of the blue by Patrick Smacchia who is the Lead Developer on NDepend to see if I would be interested in trialling NDepend and writing about my experiences on my blog.

Note: I am not affiliated with NDepend or receive any commission for sales which are from people reading my blog.

In this post I will deal with initial thoughts on installing and then in another talk about my experiences with using the application once I’ve got into using it.

Initial Install

Downloading the application was easy and straight forward. Once I’d entered the licence key into the website it downloaded without a hitch. The download size was a lot smaller than I was expecting which was a nice surprise. With using other tools in the past I was expecting a large download!

Working through the install instructions they were clear and got me up and running quickly.

On First Load

Now I’ve not played with this tool before, although I had heard of it previously, but I wasn’t expecting to be presented with an “IDE” style interface when running. I was expecting to load in a Visual Studio plugin so this was an unexpected surprise. Once logged in it did offer the ability to install the VS extension so it was just another step.

Visual Studio Integration

The installer was smooth and I had no issues. The version support is very wide, Visual Studio 2010 up to 2017, so there should not be a barrier to usage. It was nice to see that it picked up both VS2017 and VS2017 preview which I have installed side by side via the VSIX provided.

If you’re reading this and still working on a Visual Studio version earlier than 2010 then you really need to talk to your manager!

Licencing Frustration

I did have one frustration when it came to licencing on installing the software. The licence itself is a named licence for me (as far as I can tell), however I am unable to install it on my home and work machines at the same time. Even though it’s still only me working on the machines and never at the same time. Other tools, such as Resharper, allow for having my licence associated with my account and then allowing for me to use my licence on both my home and work machines. This I believe is something which needs investigating and updating.

Conclusion

I have run through the initial acquisition of the software and installing it to be used. It is straight forward and simple to get up and running. I look forward to testing the tool on a number of projects to see how it fairs.

Any questions/comments then please contact me on Twitter @WestDiscGolf