Visual Studio Blog

The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team

Three New Managed Package Framework features for Visual Studio 2010

This post describes three new features that have been added to the Managed Package Framework (MPF) version 10.0 in Visual Studio 2010. These features are available to anyone developing extensions in managed code for Visual Studio 2010. To get started building extensions for Visual Studio, start by visiting the Visual Studio Extensibility ...

Announcing: Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension

We have received much feedback asking for a feature that would recursively collapse nodes in the solution explorer. We are happy to announce the Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension! What is the Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension? Many Visual Studio users have a solution tree structure with multiple projects and ...

Open thread: Extensibility is the future?

With the release of Visual Studio 2010 came a major improvement to the overall extensibility story of Visual Studio; the new editor. With the new editor VS was introduced to a Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) based API that opened up possibilities you could barely dream of in previous versions of VS. Inside of the editor you’re able...

Custom Build Steps, Tools, and Events

The VC++ build system is of course MSBuild based in VS 2010.  This automatically gives you a great deal more flexibility to customize your build than you had with .vcproj project files in prior releases.  We went out of our way to ensure that the .targets files that drive the build of a .vcxproj file in VS 2010 leverage as much ...

Start Extending Visual Studio 2010!

Visual Studio not only boasts a wide variety of tools to improve developer productivity, but it is also extremely extensible so that it can be tailored and customized to serve specifically your needs. In fact, one of the key benefits of Visual Studio 2010 is its improved extensibility story. With an easier deployment experience, more extensive...

Creating and Sharing Project & Item Templates

One of the great new features we added in Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to easily find and consume online Project and Item templates without leaving the New Project/Item dialog. What may not be so obvious is how to go from a piece of code you want to share to a template contained in a VSIX file that can be uploaded to the Visual Studio ...

Announcement: Unpublishing Extensions from Beta 2 to RC

UPDATE 2/8: I forgot to mention a change to the VSIX file format in the Release Candidate that might impact your extensions.  The valid <Edition> values (under <SupportedProducts>) have been updated to better reflect our SKU branding.  The only valid values for RC and RTM are: IntegratedShell, Pro, Premium...