Visual Studio & TFS 2013 – List of extensions and tools (Part 2)

Visual Studio & TFS 2013 – List of extensions and tools (Part 2)

Go to Part 1 – List of Product Updates for information on Visual Studio and TFS 2013 updates

Looking for the VS 2012 product updates and extensions?  Go to Visual Studio 2012 Product and updates (Part 1)  and Visual Studio 2012 extensions (Part 2)

Looking for the VS 2010 extensions? Go to Visual Studio 2010 - List of Product Updates (Part 1) + Extensions (Part 2).

Looking for links to the test adapters, go to this blog post.

Update Sep 19th 2014:  Updated ReSharper3 , NDepend3 ,  LinqPad, ,    Code Contracts1

See earlier update notes

This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 2013. It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, last version, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 2013 connected to a Team Foundation Server 2013, although most also works with earlier versions. 

Many live in a side-by-side environment with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012. The side-by-side is supported by VS 2013. However, if you installed a component supporting VS2013 before you installed VS2013, then you need to reinstall it. (Components marked with Note 3 below) The VSIX installer will understand that it is to apply those only for VS2013, and will not touch – nor remove – the same for VS2010 and VS 2012. A good example here is the Power Commands.

The list is more or less in priority order.

The focus is to get a setup which can be used for a complete coding experience for the whole ALM process.

The list of course reflects what I use for my work, so it is by no means complete, and for some of the tools there are equally useful alternatives. 

The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column.

For components that are updated through the gallery, I will no longer update the latest version numbers, as they are easily controlled through the Tools/Extensions and Updates dialogue. In the version column I will just write Auto.

If you want to use the same set of extensions on multiple computers, you might like to share them easily. Lars Wilhelmsen has a  about how to use Dropbox to share extensions and common settings.

Extensions ready for VS 2013, both upgrades and new ones

Product Notes Latest Version License Applicable to Microsoft File Nesting Awesome and convenient Auto Free Visual Studio MSFT AutoHistory Awesome, local history Auto Free Visual Studio MS Devlabs EF Power Tools Beta 41 See blog post Auto Free Visual Studio Yes MyHistory1 See  Auto Free TFS Integration No Inmeta AssociateRecentWorkItems1 Fast way to associate recent work items to a checkin, reduce need to search around.  See Jakobs blogpost for more info Auto Free TFS Integration No

1

Get back the ability to generate unit tests from code, also works for NUnit and XUnit. Auto Free Unit Testing (VS) ALM Rangers Codelens Code Health Indicator  12 Awesome!  See this post (Norwegian), and this and this. Auto Free Coding & Quality Yes Runsettings1 Item template to create default runsettings file Auto Free Unit Testing (VS & TFS) No TypeScript See info here, and B.Harry’s blogpost. Codeplex   Release notes  Now part of VS 2013, installs with that   See http://www.typescriptlang.org/ 1.0 Free Coding Yes ReSharper3 Note:Version 8.1.23.546 and earlier have an issue with Nuget/NUnit/Chutzpah, see .  Download version 8.2 to get this resolved.  Version 8.2.1 have an issue with nuget, see this post  8.2.2000.5120 Licensed Coding & Quality No NuGet Manager   3 New initial install included with VS 2013. Updates through extension gallery Auto Free Visual Studio Yes TFS Power Tools See Brian Harry’s blog post for more info 12.1.00402.0 Free TFS integration Yes NDepend3 Info on updates here. Trial available.

5.4.1.8430

Licensed Quality No Build Manager1 Community Build Manager. Info here from Jakob Auto Free TFS Integration No Visual Studio 2013 SDK Required for using Wix Published 11.Oct.2013 Free Visual Studio Yes 3.8 Free Coding/Installers No Productivity Power Tools1 Awesome package. A must have! Auto Free Visual Studio Yes Code Contracts1 3 Now on gallery too. Info here and follow the forum here  See new  1.7.10908.11 Free Coding Yes Code Contract Editor Extensions1   1.5.60813.10 Free Coding Yes Visualization and Modeling SDK Requires VS 2013 SDK  Nov 10th 2013 Free now, otherwise Part of MSDN Subscription Modeling, DSL, UML extensions Yes Slow Cheetah1 3 Tool for transforming XML files, like config files. Auto Free Coding No Web Essentials1 Auto Free Coding Yes Devart T4 editor Nice T4 editor, using this now instead of tangible. Auto Free Coding (T4 templates) No tangible T4 editor1 Lite version is free and more than enough for T4 editing. 2.2.3 Lite version Free (Good enough) Coding (T4 templates) No ASP.Net and Web Tools 2013 Free Coding Yes

#1 Get via Visual Studio’s Tools | Extension Manager (or ). (From Adam : All these are auto updated by the Extension Manager in Visual Studio)

#2 Works with ultimate only

#3 Also works with VS 2010 and VS 2012

Tools (outside Visual Studio)

Extensions we wait for, not yet in a VS 2013 version