ReSharper Turns 20!
20 years of leading the way in developer tools
A staple of the .NET developer community since 2004, ReSharper boasts over 2.5 million downloads as the most popular extension on the Visual Studio Marketplace. With its initial release, ReSharper's impact was immediate, transforming how developers explore, write, improve, and maintain their code. Let's take a closer look at the extension's major milestones and its lasting influence on the .NET ecosystem.
2002
January 2002
.NET Framework 1.0 (and ASP.NET 1.0 as part of it), C# 1.0, Visual Studio 2002, Windows Forms, CLR 1.0, and ADO.NET are released.
2002
Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is released
2003
JetBrains begins developing ReSharper, leveraging our experience with IntelliJ IDEA 1.0 and the similarities between Java and C#. Two projects were initiated: a Visual Studio extension and a .NET IDE.
April 2003
Visual Studio 2003 is released
2004
June 2004
Mono 1.0 is released
July 21, 2004 🎉
ReSharper 1.0 featured:
- Navigation (Find Usages, Go To Declaration, and shortcuts)
- Smart type code completion
- Live templates
- Code highlighting
- And Rename refactoring
Interestingly, the C# parser generator was implemented in Java!
Evgeny Pasynkov
One of the original ReSharper developers
“The first purchase of ReSharper was made 10 minutes after the public announcement, and we were absolutely thrilled!”
2005
Did you know that there was almost a ReSharper IDE back in 2005?
After the release of Visual Studio 2005 and C# 2.0, plans to release a ReSharper IDE were scrapped due to the significant workload of building it from scratch in C#. Because ReSharper's sales as a Visual Studio extension were growing and the Visual Studio Marketplace was expanding, we decided to focus on improving the existing extension. We never lost sight of our vision to create a .NET IDE, which was later achieved in the form of JetBrains Rider.
Some code from the ReSharper IDE project remained in use for a long time, including the standalone app interface shell (tool windows and editor) that’s partially used in dotPeek, dotTrace, dotMemory, and dotCover, as well as a unit test runner, and an algorithm for diff comparisons in solution files.
The next release was ReSharper 1.5, which featured 16 new refactorings, including Extract Interface, Extract Superclass, Copy Type, Introduce Field, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Parameter, and Convert Interface to Abstract Class (and vice versa).
The next release was ReSharper 1.5, which featured 16 new refactorings, including Extract Interface, Extract Superclass, Copy Type, Introduce Field, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Parameter, andConvert Interface to Abstract Class (and vice versa).
April 2005
F# 1.0 released
October 11, 2005
November 2005
Visual Studio 2005, C# 2.0, .NET Framework 2.0, and CLR 2.0 are released
2006
January 2006
NERPA, the first third-party plugin for ReSharper, is released
The plugin author, Ilya Ryzhenkov, was looking for more extensibility from ReSharper, paving the way for future plugins. He later joined JetBrains to continue this work with the ReSharper team as a Product Manager.
May 22, 2006
ReSharper rewrites the rules of unit testing
ReSharper 2.0 ended up being a very long project, partially because it supported two versions of Visual Studio and C#. It finally launched after nearly two years of work and introduced support for C# 2.0, ASP.NET, and Visual Studio 2005, as well as nine new refactorings, and a groundbreaking unit test runner. Additionally, it featured sharing functionality for settings and templates.
June 1, 2006
The JetBrains .NET Tools blog is launched, originally focused on sharing interesting information related to .NET productivity tools, primarily JetBrains ReSharper and JetBrains dotTrace Profiler.
September 14, 2006
dotTrace 2.0 (Beta) is released and includes memory profiling, which will become a separate product (dotMemory) seven years later.
November 2006
.NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are released.
December 11, 2006
JetBrains releases ReSharper 2.5
This version brought an updated UI, replacing IntelliJ IDEA-inspired elements to contemporary Windows Forms controls for better integration with Visual Studio.
2007
June 21, 2007
ReSharper 3.0 is released with full-featured VB.NET, XML, and XAML support, as well as cross-language functionality between C# and VB. ReSharper 3.0 also introduces the unit test explorer, a totally reworked unit test runner.
November 2007
C# 3.0, Visual Studio 2008, and .NET Framework 3.5 are released
Jedi Coding with ReSharper
JetBrains Product Manager Ilya Ryzhenkov made a half-joking video to promote ReSharper in Visual Studio. In it, he builds a console application in 8 minutes to showcase rapid code generation, instant code navigation, and how ReSharper aids in refactoring and reorganizing code.
Did you know the ReSharper team once used an external utility app to tackle the limitations of the 32-bit Visual Studio process?
ReSharper faced memory limitations in Visual Studio, restricted to a few hundred MB, which was inadequate for complex projects. Additionally, .NET’s 16 MB block memory allocation caused severe fragmentation, leaving few continuous free blocks. To address this, Leonid Shalupov developed an app that launched before Visual Studio, intercepting VirtualAlloc/VirtualFree system calls to reduce fragmentation. The ReSharper Support team provided this app to customers until Visual Studio updates resolved the issue.
2008
January 2008
ReSharper 3.1 is released with SWEA
ReSharper 3.1 was the first version to introduce solution-wide analysis (SWEA), which detects erroneous C# code throughout your solution on the fly without compiling it first. This unique feature remains unparalleled in other IDEs.
March 2008
ReSharper Product Manager recommends using varification as a best practice.
With ReSharper 4.0 nightly builds, some users complained about frequent suggestions to convert explicit types to the var keyword. In a heated discussion on his blog, ReSharper Product Manager Ilya Ryzhenkov explained why using var can significantly improve your code.
Did you know that the ReSharper team once had a traffic light for build status?
Someone brought a real traffic light of unknown origins to the JetBrains office in Saint Petersburg. During a hackathon, the traffic light was connected to the build server, turning red whenever a ReSharper build failed. They say it almost never flashed green (unlike today).
June 10, 2008
JetBrains releases ReSharper 4.0
Along with solution-wide analysis, ReSharper 4.0 also introduced code cleanup and a live template editor and manager. The extension was also offered in two specialized editions: C# and VB.NET.
August 11, 2008
The Entity Framework (EFv1) is included with .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
October 2008
Mono 2.0 is released
2009
March 2009
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 is released
September 2009
Previously known as MonoTouch 1.0, Xamarin for iOS is released
November 19, 2009
JustCode emerged as an attractive solution for C# developers, offering code analysis and refactoring capabilities for Visual Studio.
2010
2010
ReSharper becomes a breadwinner for JetBrains
There were times when ReSharper’s revenue greatly exceeded that of IntelliJ IDEA, while other markets and technologies were not yet covered by JetBrains.
March 2010
JetBrains announces dotCover, a .NET code coverage tool
Integrating with ReSharper, dotCover supported running code coverage from a console with some basic functionality.
March 2010
The ReSharper 5.0 EAP introduces Call Tracking and Value Tracking
Call Tracking was designed as a convenient way to perform an all-out Find Usages or Go To Declaration, and Value Tracking was meant to determine how a certain incorrect value might have passed to a given point in your program and where it might be passed next. The EAP also introduced Inspect This (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+A) – a new shortcut to Call Tracking, Value Tracking, and type hierarchy features.
April 2010
C# 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, and .NET Framework 4.0 are released
April 7, 2010
Structural Search and Replace are introduced in the ReSharper 5.0 EAP
One of the most powerful ReSharper features, it allows you to find code that matches a structured template.
April 13, 2010
JetBrains releases ReSharper 5.0
ReSharper 5.0 was released with a set of innovative features, such as:
- Call Tracking and Value Tracking
- Loops to LINQ
- Structured patterns
- And solution-wide warnings and suggestions
Other notable updates included an extended toolset for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC developers, project refactoring and dependency views, native support for NUnit, and support for Visual Studio 2010.
Dave Mendlen
Senior Director of Developer Platform
and Tools at Microsoft
“Microsoft is pleased that JetBrains, a Visual Studio Industry Partner, has invested early in supporting Visual Studio 2010 and our next-generation application development platform, and is today simultaneously shipping ReSharper 5.0.
ReSharper 5.0 helps customers simplify their development process from design to deployment when using Microsoft products, particularly Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.”
September 14, 2010
October 2010
ASP.NET MVC 3 is released, introducing Razor syntax.
2011
February 2011
Tales from QA: Pinky and the Brain is published
Asia Rudenko, a QA specialist on the ReSharper team at the time, created a comic that was shared on the .NET Tools blog, in part proclaiming: “I must confess: at the very first moment I suspected ReSharper in trying to take over the world...”
February 17, 2011
JetBrains announces that ReSharper 6 will feature a free decompiler
In addition to the announcement of ReSharper’s bundled decompiler, JetBrains also announced the creation of dotPeek, the .NET decompiler and assembly browser. In response to the Red Hat decompiler becoming a paid product, we made the the commitment to keep dotPeek free. The dotPeek name was chosen from a brainstorming competition we ran on Facebook.
April 2011
Xamarin.Android, previously known as Mono for Android, is released
June 30, 2011
We added support for three new languages (JavaScript, CSS, and HTML) and for the ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor view engine, as well as JavaScript QUnit test runner support, making ReSharper 6.0 and Visual Studio one of the best environments for developing web applications.
October 19, 2011
Microsoft introduces the Roslyn project
November 4, 2011
The ReSharper 6.1 EAP opens with a new settings engine
Settings in ReSharper were revamped and layered, meaning you could now define global, per-solution, per-team, or individual settings.
2012
January 18, 2012
JetBrains introduces the ReSharper SDK
With the release of ReSharper 6.1, we introduced the ReSharper SDK – a separate framework designed to make plugin development for ReSharper easier.
July 26, 2012
ReSharper 7.0 comes with full integration with Visual Studio 2012, support for Windows Runtime, LightSwitch, SharePoint, and INotifyPropertyChanged, new refactorings such as Extract Class, and initial support for ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4.
August 2012
C# 5.0 and ASP.NET MVC 4 are released
September 2012
Visual Studio 2012 is released
2013
January 24, 2013
Hadi Hariri and Julie Lerman join forces for A Story of Entity Framework and ReSharper
The JetBrains Developer Advocate joined forces with the Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft MVP for an unscripted webinar, in which they demonstrated how to use Entity Framework’s code-first approach while enjoying the benefits of ReSharper.
March 2013
ReSharper Command Line Tools is announced
With the introduction of InspectCode, a command-line tool with ReSharper’s code inspections, ReSharper’s code analysis expanded beyond Visual Studio.
May 2013
NuGet-based extension manager is included in the ReSharper 8.0 EAP
We introduced a way to manage extensions inside ReSharper.
July 2013
Why ReSharper is awesome?
In this screencast, Hadi Hariri demonstrated why people love ReSharper so much ❤️.
July 18, 2013
ReSharper 8.0 becomes available
ReSharper 8.0 introduced new navigation features:
- Go to Everything (which was later renamed to Search Everywhere and added to JetBrains IDEs)
- Assembly Explorer
- Navigate to Generic Substitutions
- And Navigate to Assembly Explorer
This release also introduced architecture diagrams to all Visual Studio users, starting with a project dependency graph.
August 4, 2013
ReSharper invents postfix completion
ReSharper introduced postfix templates via a plugin, allowing you to transform typed expressions without backtracking by typing a dot and selecting a template from the completion list. These templates were later included in the ReSharper 10 EAP in 2015 and subsequently implemented in IntelliJ IDEA and other JetBrains IDEs.
October 2013
Mono 3.0, .NET Framework 4.5, Visual Studio 2013, and ASP.NET MVC 5 are released.
October 22, 2013
November 7, 2013
The ReSharper SDK becomes available on NuGet
Previously available as an MSI installer, the ReSharper SDK was shipped as a NuGet package with the ReSharper 8.1 EAP.
November 27, 2013
JetBrains introduces dotMemory as a separate product
The dotTrace Memory profiler was reworked from scratch and released as dotMemory, providing a brand-new .NET memory profiling experience.
2014
April 1, 2014
With support for Office 2003 coming to an end, we decided to offer Clippy another job in ReSharper. What started as an April Fool’s Day joke actually became a working extension, which you can watch in action in a screencast by its author, Matt Ellis.
April 2014
Microsoft makes Roslyn open source, and ReSharper decides not to use it
At the Microsoft Build 2014 conference, Microsoft made the Roslyn project open source and released a preview of the language integration for Visual Studio 2013. We decided to keep using and developing ReSharper’s own code analysis engine, as it provided more flexibility and opportunities to innovate.
October 30, 2014
Telerik announced porting JustCode to Roslyn
Unlike ReSharper, JustCode decided to add Roslyn to their own code analysis engine.
November 19, 2014
ReSharper Ultimate is launched
With the release of ReSharper Ultimate, we updated our .NET product line. The three previous ReSharper editions (Full, C#, and VB.NET) were replaced with ReSharper, ReSharper C++, and ReSharper Ultimate, which included both ReSharper and ReSharper C++, as well as dotCover, dotTrace, and dotMemory.
November 2014
Visual Studio Community 2013, the first community version of Visual Studio, is released
December 12, 2014
Highlights included support for Visual Studio 2015 Preview, C# 6.0, and regular expressions. ReSharper 9.0 also introduced new navigation features including Go to Action and Navigate to Exposing APIs, as well as type dependency diagrams. dotTrace 6.0 introduced a timeline profiling mode. Moreover, all JetBrains .NET tools started using a single installer.
2015
March 4, 2015
JetBrains introduces dotMemory Unit 🛠️
We announced the launch of dotMemory Unit, a new tool to extend your unit testing framework with the functionality of a memory profiler.
April 2015
Visual Studio Code 1.0 and Mono 4.0 are released️
April 8, 2015
A new product, ReSharper C++ 1.0, joined the ReSharper Ultimate family to improve the lives of C++ developers who work in Visual Studio. ReSharper C++ inherited most of the features of ReSharper, including its powerful navigation, coding assistance, and code generation. As an engine, it powered the C++ support in JetBrains Rider for game developers and in CLion (the Nova engine).
June 2015
Visual Studio Code 1.0 and Mono 4.0 are released️
July 2015
Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Visual Studio 2015 are released
August 10, 2015
DevExpress announces porting CodeRush to Roslyn️
DevExpress released a new product, CodeRush for Roslyn, which is distinct from its predecessor, CodeRush Classic, by using Roslyn instead of its own code engine.
August 19, 2015
ReSharper 9.2 becomes available with run configurations
Run configurations was a brand-new feature that allowed you to create, manage, and execute multiple run configurations in a single solution.
October 2015
.NET Framework 4.6 is released
October 15, 2015
JetBrains introduces ReSharper Build to avoid redundant rebuilds
ReSharper Build started as an internal tool in 2005 and later became a new feature in ReSharper 10, reducing the time it takes to build solutions. It replaced Visual Studio's build management with a system that applied heuristics to only those projects that need updating.
October 16, 2015
JetBrains announces changes to the versioning of ReSharper Ultimate tools
The collection of JetBrains .NET tools initially evolved independently, but this changed with the launch of ReSharper Ultimate, which introduced a common installer, shared assemblies, synchronized release cycles, and unified licensing. From ReSharper 10 onward, all .NET tool versions were aligned and guaranteed to be compatible.
December 10, 2015
To ensure a cohesive identity across the expanding suite of JetBrains products, including ReSharper Ultimate, we revamped our branding.
2016
January 13, 2016
Revisiting the vision of a standalone .NET IDE, JetBrains reveals Project Rider
At NDC London, we announced Rider, a 64-bit cross-platform C# IDE based on the IntelliJ Platform and ReSharper. Instead of reimplementing ReSharper’s features on the JVM-based IntelliJ Platform, Rider used ReSharper in a headless mode, communicating via a fast custom binary protocol. The backend was ReSharper written in C# running on .NET or Mono, and the frontend was written in Kotlin, utilizing the IntelliJ Platform’s APIs.
June 2016
.NET Core 1.0 and ASP.NET Core 1.0 are released
August 18, 2016
ReSharper Ultimate 2016.2 is released
Highlights included support for ASP.NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.0 projects, structural navigation, and Go to Text navigation for any text in source and textual files.
2017
September 2016
.NET Standard 1.0 is released
March 2017
Visual Studio 2017 and C# 7.0 are released
April 3, 2017
ReSharper Ultimate 2017.1 is released
This release came with support for Visual Studio 2017, local functions and throw expressions from C# 7.0, .NET Core unit testing in Visual Studio 2017, EditorConfig support (for all languages), and more.
May 2017
.NET framework 4.7 and Mono 5.0 are released
August 3, 2017
The creation of Rider was a momentous achievement for us. Not only did it signify the realization of our cross-platform C# IDE dream, but it also transformed the ReSharper plugin into a reusable ReSharper backend, which now supports other JetBrains products. Rider showcased ReSharper’s capabilities by enhancing productivity through a seamless UI and UX, as well as running code analysis outside a 32-bit process.
August 2017
.NET Core 2.0 is released
2018
August 21, 2018
ReSharper Ultimate 2018.2 is released
Highlights included support for C++/CLI and C# 7.3, integrated spell checking with ReSpeller, initial Blazor support, and more.
December 2018
Blazor Server (running on the server via SignalR) is released as part of .NET Core 3.1.
2019
April 30, 2019
ReSharper Ultimate 2019.1 is released
This release introduced initial C# 8.0 support and the first set of features for Unreal Engine developers in ReSharper C++.
April 2019
.NET Framework 4.8 and Visual Studio 2019 are released
June 2019
Did you know that ReSharper reads a project model asynchronously from the disk?
We improved ReSharper by enabling it to read a project model directly from the disk. This bypassed Visual Studio's COM API, which suffered from UI thread dependency and limitations with multiple target frameworks. While Roslyn was considered, it didn't meet our requirements. This approach facilitated non-UI thread write operations, essential for handling large project models efficiently. We developed a mechanism to calculate differences on a background thread and seamlessly update the UI when necessary.
July 2019
Mono 6.0 is released
September 2019
.NET Core 2019 and C# 8.0 are released
C# 8.0 introduced nullable reference types, and its implementation was heavily based on ReSharper's null analysis.
December 11, 2019
ReSharper Ultimate 2019.3 is released with the new .resx editor
ReSharper 2019.3 introduced a brand-new Localization Manager to help you work more efficiently with many .resx files in your solution. This release also included improved C# 8.0 support and support for Linux and macOS in ReSharper and dotTrace Command Line Tools.
December 2019
.NET Core 3.1 is released
2020
May 2020
Blazor WebAssembly (running client-side on WebAssembly) is officially released as part of .NET Core 3.2.
July 15, 2020
JetBrains updates the licensing for .NET tools, introducing the dotUltimate subscription
We streamlined the licensing for our .NET tools into three options:
- The new dotUltimate license, which includes all .NET tools and VS extensions.
- ReSharper subscription for both ReSharper and ReSharper C++.
- Rider subscription for the standalone .NET IDE.
Existing ReSharper Ultimate and ReSharper Ultimate + Rider license holders were automatically upgraded to dotUltimate.
October 2020
DPA is a memory profiling process that constantly runs in the background and checks your applications for various issues. With DPA, you can automatically analyze memory usage and catch hard-to-diagnose memory allocation issues before deploying them to production.
November 2020
.NET 5 and C# 9 are released
2021
April 28, 2021
JetBrains announces ReSharper will work with Visual Studio 2022 (64-bit)
The announcement that Visual Studio 2022 would be 64-bit was a game-changer for the ReSharper team because we already knew it worked since the release of JetBrains Rider 2017.1. At this time, we began researching how it would impact the product’s performance.
November 2021
.NET 6, C# 10, and Visual Studio 2022 (64-bit) are released
December 8, 2021
The highlights of this release included Visual Studio 2022 support, more C# 10 features, and improved support for nullable reference types.
2022
October 2022
JetBrains Fleet goes into public preview and supports C#
The ReSharper code analysis engine would now empower a new product, JetBrains Fleet.
The first release of JetBrains Fleet introduced a lightweight, distributed, and polyglot code editor with the capability to transform into a powerful development tool. It emphasized a new user experience while leveraging existing JetBrains technologies for enhanced collaboration and performance.
November 2022
.NET 7, C# 11.0, and MAUI are released
November 2, 2022
The Qodana 2022.3 EAP is released with .NET inspections
For a long time, if you wanted to run ReSharper code analysis outside of an IDE on your CI/CD server, you had only one option: InspectCode from ReSharper Command Line Tools. With this release, there was now also Qodana, a community linter from JetBrains, which is based on ReSharper and provides static analysis for .NET projects.
2023
June 26, 2023
AI Assistant comes to ReSharper 2023.2
We introduced an early implementation of JetBrains AI Assistant in ReSharper – an AI-powered chat specifically designed to answer programming questions and help with troubleshooting, refactoring, documenting, and other development workflows. AI Assistant is a supplemental feature that could be used with a JetBrains AI subscription.
August 2, 2023
Along with improving C# support, this release also introduced the ability to easily create and navigate through unit tests, and the new predictive debugger mode.
November 2023
.NET 8 and C# 12 are released
December 7, 2023
Grazie becomes ReSharper’s new built-in grammar and spelling checker
Supporting over 20 languages, JetBrains Grazie was integrated with ReSharper and included the ability to catch natural language errors within the programming languages supported by ReSharper (C#, C++, VB.NET), markup languages (HTML, XML, XAML), and even comments.
December 7, 2023
AI Assistant in ReSharper moves out of preview
JetBrains AI Assistant became generally available with a number of new and improved features to increase your productivity: a context-aware AI chat, better project awareness for AI actions, AI-powered multiline code completion, unit test generation, XML documentation generation, the ability to create a library of custom prompts, and more.
2024
The ongoing journey of the ReSharper’s component model
ReSharper’s architecture has evolved significantly, centering on its component model. Initially, it used static XML-configured service locators from Java, then transitioned to reflection-based components marked by attributes. This eliminated configuration files but kept containers static.
To support dynamic plugin loading, IViewable<T> was introduced for on-the-fly reconfiguration, but this proved too complex. Instead, a method was developed to shut down and reassemble the container without restarting ReSharper.
In 2020, the component model was adapted for both single and dual-process setups, enabling process proxying. Current efforts focus on multi-threaded container building for on-demand loading, posing ongoing architectural challenges and concentrating on performance improvements.
The future of ReSharper
Our vision for ReSharper's future includes integration with other JetBrains products, enhanced AI capabilities, and the improvement of ReSharper’s performance in close alignment with user feedback and requests. We will also stay current with the latest C# and .NET updates, and we plan to ship localized versions for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese users.
Here’s a sneak peek of the AI enhancements that are coming in ReSharper 2024.2:
Let us know →
if you want us to add something or if you found any mistakes on this timeline.
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Check out this blog post for a glimpse into the powerful capabilities AI Assistant has to offer when working in synergy with ReSharper.
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