The JetBrains Rider is a cross-platform IDE for .Net. The IDE is based on JetBrains ReSharper and IntelliJ IDEA. The .net functionality is powered by ReSharper which gives us code inspections, great navigation, and refactoring capabilities. The front end is built with IntelliJ IDEA which is a time tested and a well-known platform used to develop other IDEs for languages such as PHP, TypeScript, and HTML.
Continuous Code Analysis and Inspection
Rider assists us with continuous code analysis during design time giving us instant visibility on any problems, errors, or potential improvements in the current file and solution using over 2400 code inspections. The IDE assists us by providing quick fixes and to find similar issues.
Code generation
The IDE is aware of interfaces such as IDisposable, it will assist us to implement the disposable pattern and offer suggestions for the implementation.
Similar to the example above we can insert code from a range of configurable templates.
Navigation and search
Rider provides us with powerful and fast navigation as well as search capabilities. The IDE enables us to navigate our project using declarations, members, method calls, inheritance hierarchy, errors, and so on as well as through IDE items such as actions, settings, and tool windows. We have the option to include symbols from referenced libraries in our navigation or search results meaning the navigational scope can go beyond our solution by decompiling third-party libraries.
One of my favorite features is Rider’s global search. Which allows me to see a list of results with a small editor to apply changes as I navigate through the results.
The default shortcut ‘Ctrl + ,’ opens up a recent files dialog. The dialog displays recent files and can filter on changed files only by clicking the checkbox or using the short cut ‘Ctrl + ;’ while the dialog is open. Furthermore, the dialog provides shortcuts to different views inside Rider such as the Solution Explorer and Favorites.
The Favorites tool window lets you manage breakpoints, bookmarks, and project items.
Clipboard history is available in the ‘Paste from History’ window. The window can be opened using the shortcut ‘Ctrl + Shift + v’, an item in the list can be pasted by selecting the item and clicking paste.
Refactoring and Cleaning Code
JetBrains Rider provides an extensive set of automated solution-wide code refactorings that allow you to rename, move, and safely delete symbols, introduce and inline fields, variables, or parameters, and carry out many more transformations painlessly.
One of my most used refactoring features is the ability to refactor all namespaces solution-wide as well as extract classes contained in a single file into separate files. This feature is very useful when structuring my solution.
Dot Cover
Rider can be used in conjunction with JetBrains performance and code coverage tools, dotTrace and dotCover as well as a few others. JetBrains dotCover is a .NET unit test runner and code coverage tool that integrates with Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider.
Dot Cover’s code coverage has added confidence to the quality and stability for many of my projects using the ability to see the code that is excluded from tests and to then ensuring the code is covered. With Rider, I can see each line in the IDE with a highlighted indication of the status concerning the test. I can also see an overview of the solution and drill down to the specific code. The overview uses a percentage indication of how much code was covered.
ReSharper Ultimate + Rider
JetBrains offers a free trial of 30 days after which the ReSharper Ultimate + Rider monthly subscription fee is $17.90 US and the yearly subscription fee is $139.00 US. The ReSharper Ultimate package includes:
- ReSharper
- ReSharper C++
- dotTrace
- dotMemory
- dotCover
- dotPeek