CBC TechNote: How to solve the coupling effect with SBT?

(Written on 2005–10–6, originally posted to CSDN on Nov 03, 2005, republished here with some modifications)

The architecture of CBC (JCF Expert) was SBT v0.9. I chose it because it was included in Delphi 2005 (and C#Builder 1.0) and it was simple enough for me to modify. So in the beginning, I put new code inside David’s files. The result is a bad/ugly piece of software.

I decided to change my approach in CBC v2.0, but at this very moment, I have not enough time to sacrifice. Later I would do it. What I could do is still evolving in SBT v0.9’s architecture, but isolating my code out of David’s and putting them somewhere else.

I tried to make use of SharpBuilderTools.dll at first, in order to skip a lot of porting work. But SBT wizards have a tight tie to the plug-in’s uncustomizable Configuration class preventing me from adding my configurations (that should be a refactoring chance, since it disobeys the Open Closure principle).

So now, I have to drop this simple idea, and implement more classes. I chose not to crack SBT files, since I’d better to do more by myself, if I want to learn the architecture better. Finally I decided to keep as many files untouched as I can, but crack a few file, such as Configuration.cs.

Unbelievable that I finally made it. CBC v2.1 is the result. SBT files are put into SBT directories. Also, some of my classes are inheriting from SBT’s classes. I extends its architecture in this way.