Professional Visual Studio Extensibility
by Keyvan Nayyeri
Are you ready to extend the capabilities of Visual Studio to become more efficient and productive? Whether you want to integrate optimized builds, enhanced programming tools, or other rapid application development features, this unique resource shows you how to develop customized extensions. It not only covers the Visual Studio IDE but also provides you with an excellent reference when coding add-ins, macros, and extensions.
After a quick introduction of basic concepts, this book delves into the automation model and add-in development with the help of a case study, numerous examples, and sample code. You'll discover how to take advantage of the Add-in Wizard, manipulate solutions and projects, work with text in documents and programming code, create Tool Options Pages, and more. Next you'll gain an in-depth understanding of specific extensibility options including the Visual Studio Shell and Domain-Specific Languages Tools. After that, you will learn how to integrate your own functionality with Visual Studio with the help of VSPackage. You'll then be able to apply your knowledge to other extensibility points covered in different chapters, including debugger type proxies and visualizers, code snippets, templates, MSBuild, and macros to save time and money when developing applications.
What you will learn from this book
- A quick overview of Visual Studio Shell and Domain-Specific Languages Tools
- Techniques for creating, debugging, testing, and deploying your add-ins
- Ways to work with user interface elements, Windows Forms, and controls via code in your add-ins
- Steps for extending Visual Studio functionality using VSPackages
- Tips for writing and managing code snippets to make your coding process easier
- Using Visual Studio templates to save time when writing code for common projects
- How to use MSBuild to write custom builds for Visual Studio and .NET applications
- New techniques for recording, developing, debugging, deploying, and running macros
Who this book is for
This book is for .NET developers who are interested in extending Visual Studio. It is also for programmers who want to write highly scalable applications quickly and efficiently.
Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What is Visual Studio?
Chapter 2: The .NET Framework
Chapter 3: Quick Tour
Chapter 4: The Automation Model
Chapter 5: Add-in Wizard
Chapter 6: The Anatomy of an Add-in
Chapter 7: Manipulating the Solutions, Projects and Files
Chapter 8: Manipulating the Documents
Chapter 9: Manipulating the Code and Build Process
Chapter 10: The User Interface
Chapter 11: Add-in Options Page
Chapter 12: Debugging and Testing Add-ins
Chapter 13: Deploying Add-ins
Chapter 14: Localizing Add-ins
Chapter 15: Visual Studio Shell
Chapter 16: Domain-Specific Languages Tools
Chapter 17: Extending Debugger
Chapter 18: VSPackages
Chapter 19: Code Snippets
Chapter 20: Templates
Chapter 21: MSBuild
Chapter 22: Macros
Appendix A: Third Party Add-ins and Extensions
Appendix B: Resources
Professional Visual Studio Extensibility is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
