The Moth

This week Casey started blogging about new namespaces in CF 2.0, unique types on CF compared to desktop and breaking changes in CF 2.0 compared with 1.0. But then he summed it all up and much more in this article; go read it!

Also this week, Stan Lippman gives us his insights into the problem of a language retaining its character while having to fit in with the .NET Framework where "individual languages are diminished". Go read it especially if you are interested in templates vs generics in C++.

By creating on the device a registry key and editing a value under it one can have a file automatically created containing statistics for a .NET CF 1.0 application. For more info on this go here (the counters are also described here amongst other performance advise).

In CF 2.0 (that comes with VS2005 Beta 1) there are more statistics added. For a list of the 30 previous counters, which are still with us, I refer you to the two links already provided. Here is the list of the 23 new counters only (can broadly be grouped as Threading, GC, COM):

UPDATE: The list below has changed. See here

Number of Uncontested Monitor.Enter Calls
Number of Contested Monitor.Enter Calls
Number of recursive Monitor.Enter Calls
Number of threads in thread pool
Number of pending timers
Timer latency

Number of objects in block move
GC Number Of Mark Stack Overflows
GC Number Of PInvoke Args Encountered
GC Number Of Eval Stack Pointer Lookups
GC Number Of Object Pools Created
GC Number Of Pinned Objects
GC Number Of ByRef Types Encountered
GC Number Of Pinned ObjRefs
GC Number Of Items Pinned At JIT's Request
GC Number Of Normal ObjRefs
GC Number Of Objects Moved by Compactor
GC Number Of Objects Not Moved by Compactor

Number of Runtime Callable Wrappers
Total number of Runtime Callable Wrappers
Number of generated Com wrapper classes used by the system
Number of Com Methods
Number of Com Calls

There are many who believe that the ThreadPriority property is not available on the .NET CF (some articles, books and MS documentation got this wrong in the past). The fact is that the property is available (5 priorities like the desktop version - these map to 249-253 in Windows CE terms). However I believe it is a bad idea to change the priority of managed threads.

For every CF application there are 3+1 threads [Quote from MSFT reply to my question in the ng] :
#1 The main application thread.
#2 is used to control various period timers and timeouts that can be scheduled by the system or applications.
#3 is used to track changes to the active TCP/IP interfaces (simulating the media sense behavior that is present on Windows XP but not Windows CE).
#4 [...] the thread that is used to run object Finalizers. It is created when the first finalizable object is garbage collected.

[Note that the 2nd thread is created only when needed in the CF 2.0 Beta 1]

Apart from the first one you cannot change the priority of the threads above (they are all at 251). So if you change the priority of other threads in your app how will they play nicely with the above four?

When a NETCF garbage collection occurs there isn't a special thread that performs the collection rather it is whatever thread happens to be running when the need for a collection occurs (do not confuse the GC thread with the finalizer thread). What will the results be if that happened to be one of your own threads whose priority you lowered?

Finally, note that the ThreadPool in the CF 1.0 does not have a limit of 25 threads like the desktop framework does; instead it is 256. [CF 2.0's ThreadPool is broken in the Beta so cannot comment on that but is fixed for the next CTP. Apparently CF 2.0 will bring parity with the desktop with a limit of 25. Let's hope that will be configurable]

So if you are going to be creating threads and changing their priority you must first be sure you understand the above and cater for them in your design. I have personally elected to keep all threads at their default normal priority in my CF apps and have only had unexpected results when I experimentally deviated from that policy.

My first entry has to be... Hello World! When I have something interesting to tell you about I will... If you are developing with .NET stay tuned...