JetBrains Shows dotPeek .Net Compiler

JetBrains has launched an early-access version of its dotPeek decompiler for .NET.

JetBrains on 11 May unveiled dotPeek, its new free decompiling tool for .NET. The company will start regularly publishing pre-release builds of the software as part of dotPeek Early Access Programme, or EAP, JetBrains officials said.

Free of charge

A decompiler performs the reverse operation to that of a compiler. That is, it translates a file containing information at a relatively low level of abstraction into a form having a higher level of abstraction.

Eugenia Dubova, marketing manager at JetBrains, said the main idea behind dotPeek is to “make high-quality decompiling, combined with powerful ReSharper-like navigation and search features, available to everyone in the .NET community free of charge”.

ReSharper is JetBrains’ refactoring and productivity extension to Microsoft’s Visual Studio. It executes static code analysis and provides additional features for error correction, code completion, navigation, search, syntax highlighting, formatting, code generation and optimisation.

The JetBrains .NET Tools Blog said JetBrains dotPeek:

• decompiles .NET 1.0-4.0 assemblies to C#;
• brings the full power of ReSharper-style navigation to decompiled code;
• provides syntax highlighting and code insight; and
• is keyboard-centric, with keyboard shortcuts familiar to ReSharper users.

Dubova said dotPeek 1.0 is scheduled for public release later this year. “Currently we’re looking for user feedback from EAP users – hopefully, a lot of feedback that will help us make this new decompiler as bug-free and useful as possible for .NET developers.”

Meanwhile, JetBrains also is about to include decompiling functionality into the forthcoming release of ReSharper 6. In fact, decompiling has been announced as part of ReSharper 6.

The dotPeek website with links to fresh EAP builds is at http://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler.