In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
- Working with T4 templates in Visual Studio
- Working with Managed Extensibility Framework to write editor extensions
- Creating Visual Studio Package for tool windows and editor menus
Visual Studio 2013 being the day-to-day tool for many developers gives rich user experiences such that it eases the development and debugging process. We have discussed a lot of functionalities in Visual Studio that enhance the power of the tool and also come in handy while working with code. Some of the features might help in sharing code from the tool itself while some are entirely regarding team activities. However, even though there are so many features prebuilt with the system, the community has always supported more features for advanced users. Visual Studio 2013 provides a wide ecosystem of extensibility so that people who want to customize the feel of Visual Studio can implement an environment of their own, rather than using the existing default environment supported by Visual Studio.
In this chapter, we are going to cover some of the extensibility points that can be used to enhance Visual Studio and also to enhance or customize the overall experience of the IDE best suited for a particular individual or organization.
Note
Visual Studio Extensibility requires you to install the Visual Studio SDK. The SDK provides a wide range of tools, project templates, and reference assemblies that are required to build extensions in Visual Studio 2013. If you haven't installed the SDK yet, try installing it from http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=40758.
The following are the different ways to build extensions in Visual Studio:
- For a new programming language or a new project system, you can use Visual Studio Package to create an entire package and install it in the client machine
- For applications that require Visual Studio to be integrated, you can use the Visual Studio Isolated Shell extensions
- For editor and other components, you can use the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) components to plug in your components to Visual Studio
- You can use T4 templating in Visual Studio to help/enhance the code generation in Visual Studio