Refactoring Functions in Visual Studio 2005 for VB

Question

Does anyone know a good and free add-on for Visual Studio 2005 to get refactoring features in VB?

Answer 1

The default answer to this question is probably Refactor! since this tool is also endorsed by Microsoft as the "official" VB refactoring. However, being a free tool, it never comes close to the strength of other commercial tools, such as ReSharper or Refactor! Pro .

By the way: while I definitely advise you to try all these tools, I must also say that they make the IDE much, much slower. If your car is fast enough to handle it, go ahead and get an extra performance boost. However, I currently do not use any of these tools (despite the fact that I spent money on a Refactor! Pro subscription), because my (virtual) machine cannot handle the load.

Answer 2

I cannot recommend free, but ReSharper will do the trick. If you do not plan to use it for commercial work, it costs peanuts.

Answer 3

I should also add that you have to be careful with Resharper for VB and especially for version 2005 (R # 3.1). The VB version of the Resharper version is much less complete than the C # version, and especially in the 2005 version. In version 2008 (R # 4.1) the difference is slightly less. But still not the same.

Answer 4

Thank you for your responses!

I tried Refactor! from Developer Express, and it works great for me.

One thing that I found interesting is that Microsoft initially pulled VB refactoring support from Visual Studio 2005 , relying on third-party vendors to provide this as an add-in, which is pretty typical.
What is strange is that they later collaborated with Developer Express to help them develop Refactor! for Visual Studio 2005. This partnership seems to have continued as part of the development of Visual Studio 2008, as there is still no support for refactoring in VB in the latest version of the IDE. So now Refactor! became an “official” (alias supported by Microsoft) refactoring tool in VB with Visual Studio.
At the moment, I don’t think that functionality will be built into the IDE, so I wonder why this is not distributed with the Visual Studio installation package, for example, for other "official" add-ons, such as DotFuscator or Crystal Reports.