BCL Extensions Source Code released on CodePlex

We (Solutions Design, creators of LLBLGen Pro) are in the process of releasing some of our general frameworks as open source, namely BCL Extensions and Algorithmia. Yesterday we released BCL Extensions on CodePlex, using Mercurial as the source-control system. Algorithmia will follow soon, likely later this week. We also re-released our Helpdesk / forum system HnD again to the public, on bitbucket.org and plan to add new features soon. We decided to release BCL Extensions and Algorithmia (algorithm/datastructures library) as open source as it was the plan all along anyway: for so long I've been talking about algorithms and I can never point to example code and give you a solid piece of code into your hands, and with Algorithmia soon out in the open and BCL Extensions (which is used by Algorithmia) as well, I can. Both are also written with this in mind, to function both as a critical pillar of our work and also as an educational tool, so it isn't a lot of work.

About BCL Extensions
BCL Extensions is a small .NET 3.5+ extension method library which contains some handy and sophisticated extension methods for various .NET Base Class Library (BCL) classes. The main purpose of BCL Extensions was to form a central place for us to store our generic extension methods we wrote to avoid clutter in our .NET 3.5+ codebase, namely the LLBLGen Pro v3 designer. We tried to avoid defining an extension method for everything, that's why there's not a tremendous amount of extension methods on a lot of types, just a couple. The main reason is that the more extension methods you define, the more you pollute intellisense dialogs and often you don't need the extension method anyway, or there's a better way to write the functionality.

"Why CodePlex / Mercurial?"
After we decided to release HnD again for LLBLGen Pro v3 as an example project, we looked into which repository sites we could use for this. Before, we hosted the subversion repository ourselves, but nowadays it's not really necessary to host your own repositories anymore. There are really just 5 candidates: Sourceforge, Google Code, Bitbucket, GitHub and CodePlex. I can be short about Sourceforge: not ever will I go back there. Google Code, it's OK, but to me the site feels a bit too simplistic, as if I'm using a v0.1 system. I know most of what you need is there, but one thing feels missing: it's as if you and your project are all alone on a big site.

Read more: Frans Bouma's blog

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