KludgeHack

Lutz Roeder’s Reflector Review

Following my list of 15 great VS.NET add-ins, I will start reviewing some of the best on that list, starting with Lutz Roeder’s Reflector.

I’m a huge fan of Lutz Roeder’s Reflector add-in for .NET.

Although I didn’t created the list with some specific order, this add-in was the first on my list because it can very likely be considered the better add-in currently for .NET. The one, any .NET developer can’t really live without.

Basically is one of the most useful tools for digging into the internals .NET assemblies to find out what’s really going on under the covers. Provides mainly a class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for C#, Visual Basic and IL assemblies.

Currently on version 5.0, the tools its better than ever, bringing multiple windows and live search. This presentation shows the new features.

There isn’t a lot to say about the workings of the application. Download it here, load some assemblies and browse thru your namespaces, classes and functions. Refletor allows you to decompile every code from MSIL (Microsoft intermediate language) to VB/C#/Delphi/C++/Chrome.

Reflector also allows you to load custom add-ins. You can find a compiled add-ins list here.

My favorites reflector add-ins are:

	SilverlightBrowser: Loads and shows the files associated with a Silverlight website. Download here.
	Review: Allows editing and managing annotations during code reviews. Download here.
	PowerShellLanguage: Renders output as Windows PowerShell script.
	TestDriven.net: This Visual Studio add-in can navigate to any code element inside Reflector with a single click.