Tag Archives: c#

.NET and PowerShell tooling for the Google Cloud Platform

Last month Google made an announcement unveiling support for Visual Studio, C#, PowerShell, Microsoft SQL Server and more on the Google Cloud Platform. With so many  new features, it is easy to gloss over some of the technical aspects of the announcement, especially the fact that all of the developer tooling and libraries are open source and available on GitHub.

This post will go into some of the details behind the new C# libraries, PowerShell cmdlets, and Visual Studio extension. All three products are open source, have an exciting roadmap for the future and are hungry for your feedback.

C# bindings for Google APIs

Source: https://github.com/googlecloudplatform/google-cloud-dotnet
Docs: https://cloud.google.com/dotnet/

For years, Google has had innovative technologies powering its data centers, unfortunately Google’s internal APIs and technology couldn’t directly benefit you and your software. That was, until the Google Cloud Platform started exposing public APIs for things like machine learning, storage, logging etc. With these APIs publicly available, you can add powerful capabilities to your apps without needing to manage complex infrastructure.

There have been C# bindings for Google APIs for years. In fact, Google receives hundreds of millions of API calls from C# clients every day. But newer APIs, especially those from the Google Cloud Platform, require more advanced features like bidirectional streaming. That’s why rather than using HTTP/REST many newer Google APIs are built on top of gRPC, a high performance, open source universal RPC framework.

But don’t worry, we have C# bindings for those gRPC-based APIs too; all of it open source and on GitHub.

In both cases, the client library is the result of a C# code generator. We take the API’s discovery document (analogous to a WSDL) and generate C# code. gRPC APIs require more careful design than other APIs, but the end product is the same. Once built, the API libraries are published to NuGet.

C# code generators for Google APIs isn’t the entire story.

Source code generated from tools can look foreign at times. So for libraries where the codegen isn’t good enough, we have hand-written wrappers to provide a better, more idiomatic experience. In some cases -- such as CRUD operations using the Datastore API -- the hand-written library cuts down on the required lines of code by half.

Finally, support for C# doesn’t just mean code. We are also working to ensure Google APIs are supported on different runtimes too. Most Google APIs work on the cross-platform .NET Core runtime and we are continuing to expand support.

PowerShell support

Source: https://github.com/googlecloudplatform/google-cloud-powershell
Docs: http://googlecloudplatform.github.io/google-cloud-powershell/

C# support is great when you are writing full applications, but for DevOps, scripting is more typical. The Cloud SDK provides command-line tools (gcloud, gsutil) for managing cloud resources, but when running on Windows, Windows PowerShell is a dramatically more productive environment. Google Cloud tools for PowerShell is a set of cmdlets so you can manage your Google cloud resources. They are strongly typed, and integrate seamlessly with other PowerShell tools. For example, to learn more about a cmdlet, just use Get-Help.

In designing the PowerShell cmdlets, the main goal was to be idiomatic. We wanted to follow the best practices and guidelines so PowerShell novices and pros alike could use our cmdlets. Of course, if we have anything wrong, please log an issue on the GitHub repository. Pull requests are also welcome.

Visual Studio

Source: https://github.com/googlecloudplatform/google-cloud-visualstudio
Docs: https://cloud.google.com/visual-studio/

The C# and PowerShell features should help developers using Google services. But the biggest impact on developer productivity comes from being inside the Visual Studio IDE.

From within Visual Studio you can search for new extensions and find the Google Cloud Platform Extension for Visual Studio. It provides tools for viewing/managing data stored in Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud SQL. It also provides support for deploying ASP.NET 4.x applications to Google Compute Engine.

It is only the first release and we have some big plans for the future. You can see a lot of the short-term features we have planned by looking at the issues list in GitHub. Like making Google APIs light up for the new .NET Core runtime, being able to deploy ASP.NET Core applications to Google App Engine or Google Container Engine will be huge. Stay tuned for a future blog post about how to run C# on Google App Engine Flexible Environment, as well.

We’re just getting started

Hopefully you share my enthusiasm for Google’s ongoing development in .NET tooling. Not only is it exciting to be able to take advantage of Google Cloud Platform technologies, but also to see a future where .NET Core enables C# code to run cross-platform.

But to be successful we need your help.

If you have questions, be sure to ask on Stack Overflow (e.g. the google-cloud-visualstudio or google-cloud-powershell tags). If you have problems, please open issues on GitHub (libraries, VS, PowerShell). If you still have trouble, participate in the google-cloud-dev group.

The team here at Google is thrilled to be working with the .NET stack and your feedback is immensely helpful in prioritizing things.

By Chris Smith, Software Engineer

Introducing CCTZ: a simple time zone library for C++

"Time zones are logical and easy to use."
—no one ever


Programming with time zones is notoriously difficult and error prone. Sure, this is partially because time zones have some inherent complexity. But perhaps the bigger problem is that programmers don't have a clear conceptual model of how time and time zones work. Additionally, library support may not be what it should. The end result is that code dealing with time zones is often overly complicated and sometimes even wrong.


A couple years ago we set out to fix these time zone programming woes within Google. We did this first by defining a greatly simplified mental model that enables programmers to understand time concepts and correctly reason about their code. We also created a C++ Time Zone library that closely matches this mental model and allows programmers to handle even the most complicated issues in a general and clear way.


And since we don't believe that time zone programming problems are unique to Google, we think our solutions may be useful to others. We presented these ideas and announced the open sourced cctz library this week at CppCon 2015. Even if you don't use C++, we hope you'll take a moment to read about the simplified mental model and perhaps flip through the slides from our talk, because those ideas are language independent.

by Greg Miller and Bradley White, Google Engineering

Get your hands on Android Studio 1.3

Posted by Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android

Previewed earlier this summer at Google I/O, Android Studio 1.3 is now available on the stable release channel. We appreciated the early feedback from those developers on our canary and beta channels to help ship a great product.

Android Studio 1.3 is our biggest feature release for the year so far, which includes a new memory profiler, improved testing support, and full editing and debugging support for C++. Let’s take a closer look.

New Features in Android Studio 1.3

Performance & Testing Tools

  • Android Memory (HPROF) Viewer

    Android Studio now allows you to capture and analyze memory snapshots in the native Android HPROF format.

  • Allocation Tracker

    In addition to displaying a table of memory allocations that your app uses, the updated allocation tracker now includes a visual way to view the your app allocations.

  • APK Tests in Modules

    For more flexibility in app testing, you now have the option to place your code tests in a separate module and use the new test plugin (‘com.android.test’) instead of keeping your tests right next to your app code. This feature does require your app project to use the Gradle Plugin 1.3.

Code and SDK Management

  • App permission annotations

    Android Studio now has inline code annotation support to help you manage the new app permissions model in the M release of Android. Learn more about code annotations.

  • Data Binding Support

    New data brinding features allow you to create declarative layouts in order to minimize boilerplate code by binding your application logic into your layouts. Learn more about data binding.

  • SDK Auto Update & SDK Manager

    Managing Android SDK updates is now a part of the Android Studio. By default, Android Studio will now prompt you about new SDK & Tool updates. You can still adjust your preferences with the new & integrated Android SDK Manager.

  • C++ Support

    As a part of the Android 1.3 stable release, we included an Early Access Preview of the C++ editor & debugger support paired with an experimental build plugin. See the Android C++ Preview page for information on how to get started. Support for more complex projects and build configurations is in development, but let us know your feedback.

Time to Update

An important thing to remember is that an update to Android Studio does not require you to change your Android app projects. With updating, you get the latest features but still have control of which build tools and app dependency versions you want to use for your Android app.

For current developers on Android Studio, you can check for updates from the navigation menu. For new users, you can learn more about Android Studio on the product overview page or download the stable version from the Android Studio download site.

We are excited to launch this set of features in Android Studio and we are hard at work developing the next set of tools to make develop Android development easier on Android Studio. As always we welcome feedback on how we can help you. Connect with the Android developer tools team on Google+.

Updates to Unity, C++, and iOS tools for Play game services

Posted by Benjamin Frenkel, Product Manager

To further support all you game developers, we've updated our popular developer tools to give you a consistent set of game services across platforms for a better, more stable experience, with a particular focus on improvements to the Play game services Unity plugin. In addition, we added support for the Nearby Connections API, launched earlier this year at GDC, to our C++ SDK and Unity plugin.

Let’s take a look a closer look!

Unity plugin feature parity and stability improvements

We’ve added full support for Events and Quests in the Unity plugin. If you’re a Unity developer, you can now incorporate Quests into your games and take full advantage of Player Analytics natively within the Unity IDE.

We’ve also listened to feedback from our community of Unity plugin users and made stability improvements to Play game services Multiplayer, Saved Games, and to sign-in. You’ll now have a much better experience integrating with these Play game services, with fewer crashes and glitches.

C++ SDK and Unity support for the Nearby Connections API

We have added support for the Nearby Connections API to our C++ SDK and Unity plugin. You can now easily build awesome second screen and local multiplayer experiences, like this Beach Bugging Racing example, with the development tools you are most comfortable with.

Easier and more stable iOS builds with CocoaPods

We’ve also made major improvements to our Play game services CocoaPods, which simplify dependency management and building App Store packages from Xcode. The CocoaPods will improve building for iOS with the Play game services iOS and C++ SDKs, and the Unity plugin. We also improved the stability of multiplayer on iOS, eliminating many of the issues around accepting match invitations.

Finally, we improved our support for iOS 8, making it easier to set up multiplayer push notifications, and fixing UI compatibility issues.

Quick links to get you started

Play game services developer page: https://developers.google.com/games/services/
Case studies: http://developer.android.com/distribute/stories/games.html

Downloads

Google Play game services ends year with a bang!

Posted by Benjamin Frenkel, Product Manager, Play Games

In an effort to supercharge our Google Play games services (GPGS) developer tools, we’re introducing the Game services Publishing API, a revamped Unity Plugin, additional enhancements to the C++ SDK, and improved Leaderboard Tamper Protection.

Let’s dig into what’s new for developers:

Publishing API to automate game services configuration

At Google I/O this past June, the pubsite team launched the Google Play Developer Publishing APIs to automate the configuration and publishing of applications to the Play store. Game developers can now also use the Google Play game services Publishing API to automate the configuration and publishing of game services resources, starting with achievements and leaderboards.

For example, if you plan on publishing your game in multiple languages, the game services Publishing API will enable you to pull translation data from spreadsheets, CSVs, or a Content Management System (CMS) and automatically apply those translations to your achievements.

Early adopter Square Enix believes the game services Publishing API will be an indispensable tool to manage global game rollouts:


Achievements are the most used feature in Google Play game services for us. As our games support more languages, achievement management has become increasingly difficult. With the game services Publishing API, we can automate this process, which is really helpful. The game services Publishing API also comes with great samples that we were able to easily customize for our needs

Keisuke Hata, Manager / Technical Director, SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.





To get started today, take a look at the developer documentation here.

Updated Unity plugin and Cross-platform C++ SDK

  • Unity plugin Saved Games support: You can now take advantage of the Saved Games feature directly from the Unity plugin, with more storage and greater discoverability through the Play Games app
  • New Unity plugin architecture: We’ve rewritten the plugin on top of our cross-platform C++ SDK to speed up feature development across SDKs and increase our responsiveness to your feedback
  • Improved Unity generated Xcode project setup: You now have a much more robust way to generate Xcode projects integrated with Google Play Game Services in Unity
  • Updated and improved Unity samples: We’ve updated our sample codes to make it easier for first time developers to integrate Google Play games services
  • C++ SDK support for iPhone 6 Plus: You can now take advantage of the out-of-box games services UI (e.g., for leaderboards and achievements) for larger form factor devices, such as the iPhone 6 Plus

We also include some important bug fixes and stability improvements. Check out the release notes for the Unity Plugin and the getting started page for the C++ SDK for more details.

Leaderboard Tamper Protection

Turn on Leaderboard Tamper Protection to automatically hide suspected tampered scores from your leaderboards. To enable tamper protection on an existing leaderboard, go to your leaderboard in the Play developer console and flip the “Leaderboard tamper protection” toggle to on. Tamper protection will be on by default for new leaderboards.Learn more.

To learn more about cleaning up previously submitted suspicious scores refer to the Google Play game services Management APIs documentation or get the web demo console for the Management API directly from github here.

In addition, if you prefer command-line tools, you can use the python-based option here.

Coding Android TV games is easy as pie

Posted by Alex Ames, Fun Propulsion Labs at Google*

We’re pleased to announce Pie Noon, a simple game created to demonstrate multi-player support on the Nexus Player, an Android TV device. Pie Noon is an open source, cross-platform game written in C++ which supports:

  • Up to 4 players using Bluetooth controllers.
  • Touch controls.
  • Google Play Games Services sign-in and leaderboards.
  • Other Android devices (you can play on your phone or tablet in single-player mode, or against human adversaries using Bluetooth controllers).

Pie Noon serves as a demonstration of how to use the SDL library in Android games as well as Google technologies like Flatbuffers, Mathfu, fplutil, and WebP.

  • Flatbuffers provides efficient serialization of the data loaded at run time for quick loading times. (Examples: schema files and loading compiled Flatbuffers)
  • Mathfu drives the rendering code, particle effects, scene layout, and more, allowing for efficient mathematical operations optimized with SIMD. (Example: particle system)
  • fplutil streamlines the build process for Android, making iteration faster and easier. Our Android build script makes use of it to easily compile and run on on Android devices.
  • WebP compresses image assets more efficiently than jpg or png file formats, allowing for smaller APK sizes.

You can download the game in the Play Store and the latest open source release from our GitHub page. We invite you to learn from the code to see how you can implement these libraries and utilities in your own Android games. Take advantage of our discussion list if you have any questions, and don’t forget to throw a few pies while you’re at it!

* Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google that's dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.

Changes to Ads API .NET client library

We have made a few changes to the Ads API .NET client library to allow better maintenance and support.

Unified repository

For ease of maintenance and to reduce duplication, we have combined the AdWords, AdXBuyer, DFP and DFA API .NET libraries into one repository: https://github.com/googleads/googleads-dotnet-lib

Going forward, please use the new repository for downloading Ads API .NET client library releases, reporting issues, requesting features, and providing source contributions.

We have updated wiki articles, consolidated open issues, and imported source code of past releases.

New runtime requirement

We have increased the runtime requirement for the client library to Microsoft .NET Framework 4. This upgrade allows us to enhance the library using features available in newer versions of the Microsoft .NET framework, while moving away from .NET 2.0, which is past its mainstream support period.

In case you are still using Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, you may continue using the legacy library until July 1st, 2015, at which time we will stop providing bug fixes and enhancements to the library. Major feature enhancements and support of newer versions of the APIs will be limited to the newer library that uses Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

Updates to version numbers

We have updated the version number of the Ads API .NET client library to 18.0.0. The Common library version has been updated to 3.0.0. Going forward, all the API-specific client library assemblies will share a single version number, while the Common library will continue to maintain its own version number.

The legacy library assemblies will only have minor releases, and will use the following versioning scheme on both Github and Nuget:
  • Google.Ads.Common: 2.x
  • Google.AdWords: 17.x
  • Google.Dfp: 7.x
  • Google.Dfa: 5.x
If you have questions or feedback, let us know on our forum or our Google+ page.

Anash P. Oommen, Ads Developer Relations