Chapter 6: Extending the IDE with Add-Ins

Overview

You learned in Chapter 5 that macros provide a convenient way to automate tasks within Microsoft® Visual Studio®, and we encourage you to write macros first when customizing the integrated development environment (IDE). But for some purposes, such as writing commercial software, you might find that macros are a poor choice in terms of performance and protection of intellectual property. In such cases, the appropriate vehicle is an add-in, which is a compiled dynamic-link library (DLL) (providing increased protection) that runs within the IDE (providing increased performance).

The quickest way to get started as an add-in programmer is through the Add-in Wizard, which makes creating add-ins easy–just choose a few options, and the wizard generates an add-in that is ready for the IDE. Of course, you won't accomplish much if you don't know how to control and customize the add-in, so in the first half of this chapter, we'll show you how the different parts of an add-in act together to make it work.

The second half of this chapter covers the details of add-in architecture. In this part of the chapter, we'll hold to the ideal that wizards are tools, not crutches, and that you should use them as a convenience only after you're capable of writing the equivalent code. Of course, we don't expect you to reach that goal without a little help, so we'll teach you everything you need to know to write the equivalent of a wizard add-in.