A comparison of features provided by Microsoft's Visual
Studio Express editions and SharpDevelop is shown in the Table
below.
| Feature | SharpDevelop 3.0 | SharpDevelop 2.2 | Visual Studio Express Editions |
|---|
| Code auto-completion | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Code syntax highlighting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Forms Designer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Web Forms Designer | No | No | Provided with Visual Web Developer |
| Code Coverage | Yes | Yes | No |
| Unit Testing | Yes | Yes | No |
| Languages Supported | C#, VB.NET, Boo, F#, IronPython | C#, VB.NET, Boo | C#, C++, VB.NET, J# |
| Help documentation | No | No | Yes |
| Plug-in support | Yes | Yes | No explicit support for plug-ins however third party
plug-ins can work with the Express edition. |
| Insert PInvoke Signatures | Yes | Yes | No |
| Testing Regular Expressions | Yes | Yes | No |
| Class View | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Solution Explorer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Project and Solution File Format | MSBuild | MSBuild | MSBuild |
| Web references | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refactorings | Rename, Extract Method, Remove unused imports | Rename | Rename, Extract Method |
| Go to definition | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Find References | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Code generation | Yes. Not as powerful as Visual Studio's Code Snippet
Manager. | Yes. Not as powerful as Visual Studio's Code Snippet
Manager. | Yes |
| Object Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Database Explorer | No | Yes. Lacking support for many database providers. | Yes |
| Publishing | No | No | Yes |
| Data Sources View | No | No | Yes |
| Add Data Source Wizard | No | No | Yes |
| Document Outline View | No | No | Yes |
| Resources | Local and project | Local only | Local and project |
| ActiveX Toolbox Items | Partial - need to generate .NET interop library | Partial - need to generate .NET interop library | Yes |
| Integrated debugger | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Targeting different .NET frameworks | Yes | Yes | No |
| Reporting | Yes | Yes | Yes through the report viewer plug-in |
| Task List | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Error List | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Database Designer Tools | No | No | Yes |
| Code conversion | Yes | Yes | No |
| Integrated NAnt support | No | Yes | No |
| Integrated WiX support | Yes | Yes | No |
| Integrated FxCop support | Yes | Yes | No |
| Integrated StyleCop support | Yes | No | No |
| Navigation History | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| XPath Queries | Yes | Yes | No |
| Incremental Search | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| XML documentation preview and generation | Yes | Yes | No |