Visual Studio 2017 has brought big changes to extensibility that allow developers to install extensions to different instances and install dependencies. In support of multiple instances, a fast API was required that tools can use to find and launch Visual Studio and related tools, or to install extensions.

I previously published some samples, and now documentation for these APIs is available. The documentation is based on the runtime-callable wrapper (RCW) – the .NET interop assemblies – for the native configuration API. The main difference is that the native API will return an HRESULT while the RCW will throw a COMException where the ErrorCode will be the same HRESULT the native code would’ve returned.

If you have any feedback about the APIs, please feel free to leave comments below. Until we can update the documentation, I’d be happy to answer questions about the APIs below, or take a look at the samples for usage. Questions about the samples can also be asked in the Q&A section of the samples project site.