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

• FreeService Pack 6 for Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0 with Visual Source Safe 6.0d
  • Download the latest updates to these products. It is recommended for all users of Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0 and Visual Source Safe 6.0.
• FreeVisual Basic 2005 Express Edition
  • The free edition of Microsoft Visual Basic.NET.
• FreeVisual C# 2005 Express Edition
  • The free edition of Microsoft Visual C#.
• FreeVisual Studio 2005 SP1 for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of VS2005
  • Fixes in these Service Packs include stability, perfomance and security enhancements made in many areas of the product.
• FreeVisual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server SP1
  • This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Foundation Server.
• FreeVisual Studio 2005 SP1 for Express Editions
  • This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Express Editions.
• FreeVisual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista
  • For developers using Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista, Microsoft provides this update which adds a few features that will enable developers to create applications that take better advantage of the Vista operating system.

Migration

• FreeVisual 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.
• FreeVisual 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.
• FreeVisual 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.
• FreeMicrosoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs 2.0
  • 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.
• FreeBabbelFisken
  • A handy utility that performs basic translation from VB6, VB.NET or Delphi to C#.

Programming

• $79-$159VBMaximizer for VB6
  • This add-in by Francesco Balena and Marco Bellinaso extends the VB6 IDE with over 70 new commands. It comes a full-featured Code Librarian that lets you categorize, search, bookmark, and annotate your procedures, and that includes a library of 500+ super-optimized, ready-to-use routines. A great aid to refactor VB6 applications and prepare them for the migration to VB.NET. In year 2000 this add-in was voted by Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal readers as best productivity tool.
• Registration required - FreeMsgHookX, a VB6 DLL for efficient subclassing
  • MsgHookX is an ActiveX DLL, written by Francesco Balena, that enhances VB6 with the capability to perform subclassing in a safe and extremely efficient way.
• $79-$318CodeBox for .NET
  • A full-featured utility from the authors of VB Migration Partner. It lets you store Visual Basic .NET and C# code into an Access, MSDE or SQL Server database. You can store individual methods, classes, modules, structures, interfaces, or partial code snippets; browse the code with a hierarchical explorer; search, bookmark, print and export code items to HTML; organize code snippets in categories by using drag-and-drop, and much more.
• FreeSpell Checker for VS.NET 2005 Add-in
  • This Visual Studio 2005 add-in provides a multi-language spell checker for your comments and string literals. It works like Microsoft Word’s checker, but provides additional features useful for programmers.
• FreeResourcer 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.
• $39Clear VB: Source Code Formatter
  • Tangible Software Solutions’ tool which allows you to re-format poorly organized VB code and replace outdated VB6-style coding style in your VB.NET code. In addition, Clear VB allows you to standardize formatting and some of the ambiguities of VB code and to explicitly specify modifiers that VB allows you to omit.
• FreeWinMerge
  • 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.
• FreeSysinternals’ 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.
• FreeWho'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

• FreeReflector 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.
• FreeFxCop
  • 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.
• $341SSW 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-$990Project Analyzer
  • Source code analyzer, optimizer and documenter for Visual Basic, VB.NET and VBA, by Aivosto.
• $248-$415NDepend
  • A tool that analyzes code structure through developer’s design rules, plans massive refactoring, and masters evolution.
• FreeVB6 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

• FreeRefactor! 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.
• $249.99CodeRush™ 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.
• $249CodeSMART 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.
• FreeResource Refactoring
  • A utility that allows developers to extract hard-coded literal strings and convert them to resource files.

Profilers

• FreeCLR 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.
• $499dotTrace Profiler
  • A profiler tool for .NET Framework, to check application performance and spot memory leaks.

Obfuscators

• $1,890-$4,950Dotfuscator
  • 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.)
• $799Demeanor for .NET
  • A powerful obfuscator for .NET Framework language by Wise Owl.
• $399-$3995{smartassembly}
  • A tool that obfuscates and protects .NET code, optimizes .NET assemblies for better deployment, minimizes distribution size, and increases performance.

Code Generators

• $99-$399CodeSmith
  • A template driven code generator that automates the creation of common application code for any language (C#, Java, VB, PHP, ASP.NET, SQL, etc.).
• $10-149TCDesigner
  • A stand-alone code generator that shares the familiar look and feel of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.

Project Management

• Single-User Edition FreeOnTime 2007
  • A bug tracking software with integrated help desk and project management features by Axosoft.
• $25-$199FogBugz
  • A project management system which includes a wiki, discussion groups, bug tracking, and customer email features.