In this page we’ve gathered a bunch of links to free and commercial products that can be useful to VB developers. Most of these tools can be quite useful to prepare VB6 code for the migration step or to fix and beautify the VB.NET code after the conversion.

A disclaimer is in order: even if we regularly use some of these tools, we haven’t tested all of them in depth and we aren’t endorsing or recommending them in any way (… except for those we’ve written ourselves, of course).


Languages

Migration

  • Free - Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET Upgrade Assessment Tool
    • This tool analyzes application components and the relationships between them from an upgrade perspective, considering elements, constructs, and features that consume resources during an upgrade. It generates a group of reports that are used for calculations related to task effort and cost. The user can specify configuration values that will override the initial estimation inputs to adapt the assessment tool to their needs.
  • Free - Visual Basic 6.0 Code Advisor
    • The Visual Basic 6.0 Code Advisor can assist developers in making a successful transition to VB.NET. Once installed, this VB6 add-in can scan your projects to ensure they meet predetermined coding standards. It can also suggest changes and best practices to ease your migration from VB6 to VB.NET, and enables you to create custom scanning rules to check your VB6 code for compliance with your own personal or development team best practices.
  • Free - Visual Basic 6.0 Upgrade Samples
    • A set of four code samples that demonstrate techniques for upgrading from Visual Basic 6.0 to Visual Basic .NET.
  • Free - Microsoft Visual Basic Power Packs 3.0
    • Includes the .NET versions of Line and Shape controls, and updated versions of the PrintForm Component and the Printer Compatibility Library. The Printer Compatibility Library allows projects that used the Printer and Printers Collection in Visual Basic 6.0 to be upgraded without having to re-write your printing logic.

Programming

  • Free - Resourcer for .NET
    • An editor for .resources (binary) and .resX (XML) file formats used with the .NET platform. Resourcer allows editing of name/string pairs, import of bitmaps/icons, and merging of resources from different sources.
  • Free - WinMerge
    • WinMerge is an open source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is quite useful to compare different version of the same VB6 project, especially if it has been modified after migration process.
  • Free - Sysinternals’ Utilities
    • A series of utilities to help developers manage, troubleshoot and diagnose Windows systems and applications. Process Explorer shows information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded; Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, registry and process/thread activity; ListDLLs is able to show you the full path names of loaded modules; DebugView lets you monitor debug output on your local system.
  • Free - Who's Locking?
    • When a process loads a module (DLL), it locks the DLL and no other process can delete and/or write in it: you get "Sharing Violation" errors (or "Access Denied"). This tool, written by Emmanuel Kartmann, helps you find which process is locking a given DLL.

Code analysis

  • Free - VB6 Bulk Analyzer
    • While most code analyzer work at the project level, Code Architect’s VB6 Bulk Analyzer is able to do code analysis on all the VB6 source code inside a directory tree and is therefore the right tool for analyzing complex VB6 applications split in dozens or even hundreds projects. In addition to the usual statistics, its report includes the list of all type libraries, ActiveX controls, Declare statements, plus the occurrences of VB6 keywords and members that may cause problems during the migration to VB.NET. If you contact us with specific questions about your VB6 application, don’t forget to send us the report that VB6 Bulk Analyzer has created on your code.
  • €69-€245 - Reflector for .NET
    • Reflector is a class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for .NET. It allows to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic, and IL.
  • Free - Telerik JustDecompile
    • JustDecompile is a freeware .NET decompiler.
  • Free - FxCop
    • A code analysis tool that checks .NET Framework assemblies for conformance to the Microsoft .NET Framework Design Guidelines. It uses reflection, MSIL parsing, and callgraph analysis to inspect assemblies for more than 200 defects.
  • $106.78 - SSW Code Analyzer
    • A code analyzer for VB.NET and C#, that works with both Windows Forms and ASP.NET projects. It comes with a large database of coding rules, that can be extended if you are familiar with regular expressions.
  • $299-$990 - Project Analyzer
    • Source code analyzer, optimizer and documenter for Visual Basic, VB.NET and VBA, by Aivosto.
  • $248-$415 - NDepend
    • A tool that analyzes code structure through developer’s design rules, plans massive refactoring, and masters evolution.
  • Free - VB6 Reference Explorer
    • This utility scans the given folder and sub folders for VB6 project files, finds out which project file references other projects, and generates a tree of these relationships.

Refactoring

  • Free - Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005
    • Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005 is a free add-in that enables VB developers to simplify and re-structure source code inside of Visual Studio 2005, making it easier to read and less costly to maintain.
  • $249.99 - CodeRush™ with Refactor!™ Pro
    • This tool from Developer Express helps you to create code blocks quickly and with just a few key presses. CodeRush completes identifiers as you type and expands or contract selections logically.
  • $249 - CodeSMART for VS.NET
    • CodeSMART 2007 for VS.NET is a powerful toolset that extends Visual Studio environment with powerful search and replace capabilities, a code analyzer to refine the code, spell checker and much more.
  • Free - Resource Refactoring
    • A utility that allows developers to extract hard-coded literal strings and convert them to resource files.

Profilers

  • Free - CLR Profiler for the .NET Framework 2.0
    • This tool by Microsoft allows developers to see the allocation profile of their .NET applications, including a histogram of allocated types, allocation and call graphs, a time line showing GCs of various generations, the resulting state of the managed heap after those collections, and a call tree showing per-method allocations and assembly loads.
  • €284 - dotTrace Memory
    • A profiler tool for .NET Framework, to check application performance and spot memory leaks.

Obfuscators

  • Price not available - Dotfuscator
    • PreEmptive’s obfuscator allows you to rename variable and member names, to make decompilation more complicated. The commercial edition adds string encryption and other additional features. (This product is the commercial edition of the obfuscator included in Microsoft Visual Studio.)
  • $160-$2000 - Demeanor for .NET
    • A powerful obfuscator for .NET Framework language by Wise Owl.
  • €645-€945 - {smartassembly}
    • A tool that obfuscates and protects .NET code, optimizes .NET assemblies for better deployment, minimizes distribution size, and increases performance.

Code Generators

  • $299-$4999 - CodeSmith
    • A template driven code generator that automates the creation of common application code for any language (C#, Java, VB, PHP, ASP.NET, SQL, etc.).

Project Management

  • Start at $995 for 5 Users - OnTime 2007
    • A bug tracking software with integrated help desk and project management features by Axosoft.
  • Start at $25 per user per month - FogBugz
    • A project management system which includes a wiki, discussion groups, bug tracking, and customer email features.