Jason Row

I started by reading the one book that I had quick access to: Writing Add-ins for Visual Studio.Net by Les Smith. From that I managed to throw together a quick prototype of what I wanted my add-in to do. p> I didn’t think that building the add-in would be so bad. There’s an extensibility project type that you can choose from and you run the Wizard in order to get going. I wanted the add-in to be in a dockable tool window but I had issues with that. The sample VB code that I found didn’t seem to work quite like the example from Microsoft. (see Creating a Dockable Tool Window in the links below).

From there I decided that I’ll just have a form pop up with the Always on Top property set to True and have my prototype do what had to be done.

I thought I would post the list of resources that I found helpful as well as a few things to keep in mind when creating an app.

Things to watch out for

Version 2003 add-in won’t work on 2002

Can’t remember where I saw this but I’m 90 percent sure this is the case.

Version 2002 add-in requires registry edit to work with 2003

PRB: Add-ins that you create by using Visual Studio .NET 2002 do not load when you start Visual Studio .NET 2003 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;823236

The last add-in installed responds to events and doesn’t pass it along to other Add-Ins

BUG: Command events fired only to last add-in loaded in Visual Studio .NET http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555090

Books

Writing Add-ins for Visual Studio.NET
By Les Smith ISBN: 1590590260
Published by Apress in 2002

Web Groups

Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vsnetaddin/files/

Microsoft Newsgroup
http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.vsnet.ide&tid=e1a90319-2b7b-4e25-9954-27843992ebf9&cat=en-us-msdn-visualtools-vsnet&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

Creating a Dockable Tool Window

How do I create custom tool windows
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vstchFAQAboutVSNETAutomation.asp

Other Links

Visual Studio Add-Ins: Hosting A C# UserControl
http://www.devsource.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,1759,1640986,00.asp

http://www.devsource.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,1759,1641413,00.asp

MS Extensibility Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dno97ta/html/faceid.asp

Visual Studio automation examples
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EE1C9710-6DF7-4F3F-A5AE-425A478DDEEB&displaylang=en

Automation samples for Visual Studio .NET 2002
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/samples/automation2002/

Visual Studio.NET Automation
http://consulting.dthomas.co.uk/ooad_articles_resources/Visual-Studio-dotNET-Automation.pdf

Referencing the DTE Object
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxconreferencingdteobject.asp

Creating Add-Ins and Wizards
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxconcreatingautomationobjects.asp

HOW TO: Create and Load Add-ins in the Visual Studio .NET IDE by Using Visual Basic .NET

Frequently Asked Questions About Visual Studio .NET Automation
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vstchFAQAboutVSNETAutomation.asp