{"id":229751,"date":"2020-06-24T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/?p=229751"},"modified":"2020-07-09T09:41:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T16:41:51","slug":"delivering-on-a-promise-the-essential-extension-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/delivering-on-a-promise-the-essential-extension-pack\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivering on a promise \u2013 the essential extension pack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During Microsoft Build 2020 in May, developers watching the live stream asked me to make it easy to acquire the basic extensions all Visual Studio users would benefit from. What a great idea, so of course I said yes. The wait is now over, get the <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.BasicEssentials\">The Essentials<\/a> extension pack today!<\/p>\n<p><em> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-229752\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/06\/madsk-2020-build-session.jpg\" alt=\"Image madsk 2020 build session\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/06\/madsk-2020-build-session.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/06\/madsk-2020-build-session-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/06\/madsk-2020-build-session-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/06\/madsk-2020-build-session-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p>During my <a href=\"https:\/\/channel9.msdn.com\/Events\/Build\/2020\/INT172\">Visual Studio 2019 (remote dev) tips &amp; tricks<\/a> session at the Build conference, I showed off a few extensions. I\u2019m a big fan of Visual Studio extensions and write <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/publishers\/MadsKristensen\">quite a few<\/a> of them when I have the time. So, when asked several times for a quick and easy way to install the most useful extensions, I said \u201csure, I\u2019ll make an extension pack\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>An extension pack is a single extension that asks Visual Studio to install one or more other extensions. They are <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/extensibility\/walkthough-create-extension-pack\">super easy<\/a> to make and both <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.WebEssentials2019\">Web Essentials<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.ExtensibilityEssentials2019\">Extensibility Essentials<\/a> are examples of extension packs. Those are two extension packs targeting very specific types of development and not relevant for any other.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It takes longer to come up with a name for an extension pack than to build one<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This new extension pack has two requirements:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Must only contain extensions relevant to <strong>all developers<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Its name must end with the word <strong>Essentials <\/strong>(my rule)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>First, I needed to identify the extensions I can\u2019t live without and then remove ones that aren\u2019t useful for <strong>all developers<\/strong>. That gives me this list of extensions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.AddNewFile\">Add New File<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.EditorEnhancements\">Editor Enhancements<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.EditorConfig\">EditorConfig Language Service<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.FileIcons\">File Icons<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.insertguid\">Insert GUID<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.LearntheShortcut\">Learn the Shortcut<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.visualstudio.com\/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.MarkdownEditor\">Markdown Editor<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Second, I had to come up with a good name. Something that describes a set of extensions that are generally useful, performant, reliable, and of high quality. I couldn\u2019t think of anything clever, so the name I came up with is:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Basic<\/span> The Essentials<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Can you do better?<\/h2>\n<p>Is this the best list of extensions and could the name need some improvement? Let me know in the comments below.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to create your own extension pack, then check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/extensibility\/walkthough-create-extension-pack\">walkthrough<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/madskristensen\/BasicEssentials\">source code<\/a> of <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Basic<\/span> The Essentials. That\u2019s a bit misleading, because no code is required to create an extension pack. It\u2019s just a JSON file built in a certain way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During Microsoft Build 2020 in May, developers watching the live stream asked me to make it easy to acquire the basic extensions all Visual Studio users would benefit from. What a great idea, so of course I said yes. The wait is now over, get the The Essentials extension pack today! During my Visual Studio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":642,"featured_media":255385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-studio"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>During Microsoft Build 2020 in May, developers watching the live stream asked me to make it easy to acquire the basic extensions all Visual Studio users would benefit from. What a great idea, so of course I said yes. The wait is now over, get the The Essentials extension pack today! During my Visual Studio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/642"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}