PostSharp Alternatives
PostSharp vs. tools you already know
| Benefit | PostSharp | Vanilla C# / VB | Refactoring Tools | Dependency Injection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build automation for your own patterns with comprehensive toolkit | Yes | |||
| Ready-made standard design patterns implementations | Yes | |||
| Build thread-safe applications | Yes | |||
| Detect errors and non-compliance before code reviews | Yes | |||
| Leverage the skills of your most experienced developers to the whole team | Yes | |||
| Compatible with PostSharp | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
PostSharp vs. AOP and meta-programming
| Benefit | PostSharp Pattern-aware compiler |
Old-school AOP AspectJ |
Meta Programming | Proxy-based AOP | Dynamic languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enhance programs with simple new behaviors | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enhance programs with advanced new behaviors | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Verify programs at build-time against simple rules | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Verify programs at build-time against complex rules | Yes | Yes | |||
| Excellent run-time performance | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Guarantee to produce correct programs at build-time | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Easy to use by average application developers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Detect errors and non-compliance before code reviews | Yes | ||||
| Available for C# and VB | Yes | Yes | |||
| Visual Studio Tooling | Yes | ||||
| Ready-made pattern implementations | Yes |
Detailed comparison matrix
| Features | PostSharp Pattern-aware compiler |
Refactoring Tools Resharper |
MSIL Rewriters Cecil, Fody |
Niche Languages F#, Erlang |
Dependency Injection Unity, Castle |
Static Analysis Tools FxCop, NDepend |
Frameworks, Components |
PreEmptive Analytics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Does not reformat your code | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Makes source code semantically simpler and more concise | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Empowers every team member: architects, senior developers and application developers | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Reduces number of defects in your code | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Improves architecture and makes application maintenance easier and less expensive | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Outstanding run-time performance | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||
| Works with your code – with minimal rewriting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Get started under 30 minutes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Ready-Made Patterns | ||||||||
| Basic automatic INotifyPropertyChanged implementation | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Comprehensive automatic INotifyPropertyChanged implementation with support for nested objects | Yes | |||||||
| Automatic Undo/Redo implementation | Yes | |||||||
| Thread Safety for C# and VB | Yes | |||||||
| Automatically add logging | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Automatically implement parent/child relationships | Yes | |||||||
| Automatically implement IDisposable | Yes | |||||||
| Thread Safety | ||||||||
| Immutable model | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Freezable model | Yes | |||||||
| Synchronized model | Yes | |||||||
| Reader-writer synchronized model | Yes | |||||||
| Thread-unsafe model | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Thread-affine model | Yes | |||||||
| Actor model | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Aspect-Oriented Programming | ||||||||
| Creates automation for your own patterns | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Adds behaviors to interface or virtual methods | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Adds behaviors to any method | Yes | |||||||
| Adds behaviors to any field or property | Yes | |||||||
| Adds behaviors to any event | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Introduces interfaces to target class | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Introduces methods, events, properties, managed resources, custom attributes | Yes | |||||||
| Initializes aspects at build time for fast runtime performance | Yes | |||||||
| Visual Studio Tooling | Yes | |||||||
| Architecture Validation | ||||||||
| Validates your code against pre-defined design rules | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Validates your code against custom rules | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| Combines code validation with code generation | Yes | |||||||
| Support | ||||||||
| Commercially Supported | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Cross-platform | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Fully documented | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||