ArtinSoft's Blogs

Software Migration Experts
Welcome to ArtinSoft's Blogs Sign in | Join | Help
in Search

Jose Aguilar's Blog

All things migrations, software and technology

Show Migration Errors, Warnings and Issues (EWIs) on Visual Studio’s Task List

This is a very simple configuration option that can really help you speed up the process of reviewing all migration EWIs (Errors, Warnings and Issues) when working with migrated code. In Visual Studio, you can use the Task List panel to keep track of a list of items (tasks) you need to go through. This Task List can be configured to show migration EWIs, as shown in the following screenshot:

For this to work, in the Visual Studio IDE, select Tools->Options from the main menu. In the Options window, navigate to Environment->Task List. Here, you’ll need to add the four types of EWIs inserted by the VBUC, along with their priority:

  • UPGRADE_ISSUE: Issues appear when there is some migrated code that is very likely to cause a compilation error. My recommendation is that you add it with Normal priority
  • UPGRADE_NOTE: Notes are basically information messages. For example, if the VBUC detects dead code, it will comment it out and add an UPGRADE_NOTE comment to make sure the developer understand why it was removed. This can be added as Low priority, since they very rarely require manual intervention after the migration.
  • UPGRADE_TODO: Partially upgraded code. These EWIs should be added as high priority, since they indicate the developer needs to perform some additional work to complete the migration.
  • UPGRADE_WARNING: Warnings appear when there is a difference in behavior between the VB6 code and its .NET equivalent. The solution provided normally works, but there are some scenarios where additional manual intervention may be required (most likely from runtime errors). I normally add them to the Task List as Normal priority.

 

With this configuration, you can very easily and quickly browse through all the EWIs in a file, and determine which ones actually require you to perform some manual work, and which ones can be either removed because the line they are tagging will work, or if their verification will be deferred until functional testing takes place.

You can read more about VBUC’s Errors, Warnings and Issues here, and about Visual Studio’s Task List at this link.

Comments

No Comments

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(optional)
(required) 
Submit

About Jaguilar

Jose A. Aguilar has been working at ArtinSoft for more than 6 years, starting out with Informix to Java migrations and moving on to VB6 to .NET conversions using the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion. He currently works as both Senior Software Migration Consultant and Program Manager for the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion, helping clients to leverage their existing investments in VB6 by moving them to .NET Framework.

This Blog

Syndication

Powered by Community Server (Non-Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems