Getting started with Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility - 3 questions

Question

1.) How differs "Visual Studio Package" project from the "VSIX" project?

2.) Where I can find some beginners guides?

3.) Where I can find a overview of the extensibility model or extension points of Visual Studio 2010?

Thanks in advance!

Warrigal

See stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vsx – Torrietorrin

Answer 1

Can you explain what type of extension you want to write? It may change my answers here.

1. Both projects produce a VSIX. the VSIX project just produces an empty one, whereas the package project sets you up with a Managed Package Framework package. Here are some walkthroughs for packages.

2. You can try the main page for extending visual studio. If you give more information about what you want to build, I can point you at more specific sources.

3. Depends on what you are trying to do. There are guides on the Visual Studio SDK, which has sections on language services, editors (adding new editor factories or extending the built-in editor), extending the debugger, etc.

Palette

Can you tell me a little bit more about the VSPackage? As I know, Visual Studio 2010 uses MEF(Managed Extensibility Framework). Why does not the SDK support a service the the command bars? Isn't that the old way(COM, ect.)? – Warrigal

Some parts of VS2010 use MEF (the editor, primarily, and also the project system in parts). The extensibility services related to the shell (editor factory, tool windows, commands, tools->options pages) and debugger (debugger integration for a language), along with a few others, have the same extensibility story they had in VS2008. – Palette

MPF == Managed Package Framework msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb166554.aspx – Trevelyan