To write plugins for ReSharper, you need to have the Software Development Kit (SDK) installed. Starting from ReSharper v8.1, SDK is divided into two parts, which we'll be discussing in the following sections.
The first part of the SDK is the MSI installer, which contains Visual Studio project templates, item templates, and samples.
Installing the ReSharper SDK is very easy and can be done by performing the following steps:
- Download the installation package. Go to the Download ReSharper page at http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/download/index.html and click on ReSharper SDK for ReSharper 8.1.x (.msi) in the Related Downloads section.
- After opening the downloaded installation package, you should see the standard installation screen. By clicking on the Next button, you can start the installation process.
- After performing the previous step, you can open the
ReadMe.htmlfile, which contains a quick introduction to creating ReSharper plugins.
The second part of SDK contains all the assemblies that need to be referenced in the plugin project, MSBuild tasks, and all the required build tools. It is available as a NuGet package, as shown in the following screenshot:
As you can see, there are actually two packages. The first one contains the assemblies required to create plugins, and the second one contains assemblies to create tests for plugins.