Visual Studio Extensibility

Have you ever thought that Visual Studio would be even more incredible with this one additional feature?

Why not add it yourself?

It is probably easier to do it than you think.

Visual Studio has a built-in mechanism for hosting custom “add-ins” to the IDE. Add-ins have access to the Visual Studio Automation Model, which provides a nicely abstracted set of objects for interacting with the IDE. If you have ever used VS Macros, they use the same automation model, but add-ins can be written in any language and access even more IDE features. You can add new toolwindows, commands, and handle IDE events. For some great examples, you could check out the contestants in the “Coolest Add-in Coding Contest” organized by one of our MVP’s Roy Osherove. Congratulations to the winners!

 

You can get more information on this at https://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend.

 

Namaste!