VSIX Tutorial-Basic Extension
This tutorial will be based on Visual Studio 2012, so some menu item could differ!
Prerequisites
- Visual Studio 2012 or up
- Visual studio SDK, that can be downloaded from Microsoft
Install the VsSDK and restart Visual Studio
Create The Project
- Go to the menu File->New Project
- And chosse Extensibilty->Visual Studio Extension, name it MyExtension
- Then a wizard will appear
- Next
- Choose Visual C# as a language
- Choose Generate a new key file
- Next
- Fill in your data
- Next
- Leave all VSPackage Options empty
- Next
- Uncheck all tests... this will be for another time
- Finish (it will take a while)
Create a test project
Create a new Console Application Solution, call it TestSolution
This will be used as a test application. I usually create at the same level of the extension solution
Debugging
- Reopen the MyExtension solution
- Setup the path of the application executable to the path of your devenv.exe (the Visual Studio executable).
- Run debugging with Ctrl+F5
- This will create a new "fresh" Visual Studio instance
- This will be completely separated from the previous instance
- It will take a while
If you go on Tools->Extension and Updates you will find the MyExtension installed.
It will not be present on the project you are debugging.
Conclusion
Now everything is in place!
You can download the code
Last modified on: November 27, 2013
