Recently, we published a simple web page that will generate a Package/Shell Load Key for you immediately. No more waiting for an email to arrive, logging in with Live ID, etc…

Anand has just announced a new tool called Namespace# for diagnosing problems and working with Help 2.0 integration. I haven't tried it out yet, but this looks like a really promising tool for anyone integrating help content with Visual Studio.

Congratulations to the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) team who just released their first CTP! As Gareth mentioned earlier, "this is something to keep an eye on as it will play a role in Visual Studio eXtensibility in the future."

Krzysztof Cwalina posted a great intro to MEF a few weeks back.

Looks like the VSX Forum has been migrated over to the new MSDN Forums!

A while back, there was some interest on the VSX forum around adding back functionality to have "Match Case" and "Match Whole Word" buttons on the toolbar in Visual Studio 2005. At the time, I created a little addin to do this and just posted it to a website I had access to.

In the meantime, I accidentally deleted the files from the web server (oops). Also, some folks have been asking if there was a version that works with Visual Studio 2008.

I've set up a page on the MSDN Code Gallery to be a permanent home for this addin. I've released files that will allow you to install the addin for both Visual Studio 2005 & 2008. You can also download the sources if you're interested. Please open any bugs you find on the Issue Tracker page. Enjoy!

Enjoy!

FYI...Jimmy has an update on where the Lang .NET videos went. The company hosting the server reported a 5,000% increase in traffic when the videos were posted online!

Yesterday, Ken Levy and I sat down with Dan from Channel 9 to have an unscripted discussion about Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) (including finding a bug live during an untested, on-the-fly demo!). We also discussed creating your own Visual Studio Shell and show off how to add a new package to a VS Shell application, among other things. Check it out:

Ken and Aaron discuss VSX

In another video, Anthony and Ken also show off the Visual Studio Gallery that was announced this morning:

Anthony and Ken discuss the Visual Studio Gallery

Soma has just announced, the new Visual Studio Gallery. The gallery is the central location where you can find (and advertise) Visual Studio extensions. All you need to add an entry on the gallery is a Windows Live ID, so if you have a free/open-source extension, don't hesitate to help end users locate it via the gallery.

Even if you don't have any products to advertise, it's still a great place to discover both free and paid extensions for Visual Studio. For example, check out the free StickyNotes tool that Pablo Galiano put together. It's a slick WPF-based tool window that allows you to annotate project & source files.

Ever since Mattox Beckman introduced the OCaml language to those of us lucky enough to be in his "Languages and Compilers" course back at UIUC, I've had an interest in functional languages.

A few months ago, Soma announced that Microsoft will be turning F# (a variant of OCaml that runs on .NET) into a fully supported product.

Since then, I've been meaning to try and see if I could create a simple VSPackage using F# and get it loaded and working in the IDE. I'm pleased to report that this is indeed possible, although it requires a few manual steps (due to F# not having support for MSBuild at the present time). Besides the VSCT file used to statically define the menu command, here is the entirety of the code for the package. All this package does is add a menu command to the Tools menu (via VSCT) and add a handler for it at runtime here:

#light
namespace FSharpPackage
open System
open System.ComponentModel.Design
open System.Runtime.InteropServices
open Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell
open Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop

[<GuidAttribute("5b1edd5f-eda1-40b5-9fe3-e8f3af42297f")>]
[<DefaultRegistryRoot("Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0Exp")>]
[<ProvideMenuResource(1000s, 1)>]
[<PackageRegistration(UseManagedResourcesOnly=true)>]
type MyPackage() =
    class
        inherit Package() as base

        let commandSetGuid = "fa6884a3-2efb-43c6-81e5-2a03fb39a7d8"
        let menuExecuteHandler = new EventHandler(fun _ _ -> ignore(System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Inside F# function!")))
        let commandId = 0x100

        override x.Initialize() =
            base.Initialize()
            let menuService = base.GetService(type(IMenuCommandService)) :?> OleMenuCommandService
            menuService.AddCommand(new OleMenuCommand(menuExecuteHandler, new CommandID(new Guid(commandSetGuid), commandId)))
    end

To try this out on your own machine (with VS 2008 + VS 2008 SDK + F#), do the following:

1. Download the sources from the MSDN Code Gallery & unzip to a folder on your machine
2. Open a command prompt
3. Ensure that the F# tools (fsc.exe, resxc.exe) are on the PATH
4. Navigate to the folder from Step 1, and run build.bat
5. Launch the VS Experimental hive (devenv /ranu /rootsuffix Exp)

You should then see a command called "My Command FSharp" in the Tools menu.

This package doesn't really do anything fancy that leverages F#, and certainly, you could approach this another way (e.g. create your library in F# and call into it with a typical VSPackage coded in C#, etc...). Nevertheless, it's still neat to see that it's possible. :-)

There's a nasty bug in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK browser (i.e. the app you can use to browse the samples, etc...) which can cause it to not be restored from "minimized" and/or cause big ugly red "X"s all over the place.

This will be fixed in the next release of the SDK. In the meantime, if you hit this problem, you can workaround the bug by running the following from a command prompt:

"%VSSDK90Install%\SdkBrowser\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Sdk.Browser.exe" /reset

A few weeks ago, Carl Brochu and I had the incredible opportunity to speak at the 2008 Lang .NET Symposium that was hosted here on the main Microsoft campus (alongside some much more well-known folks in the software industry). Our talk was titled "Integrating Languages in the Visual Studio Shell" and covered the basics of adding your own custom language to Visual Studio. We also demonstrated the array of possibilities around creating a custom-branded IDE with the Visual Studio Shell.

If you're considering adding a language to VS (or just want to know what's involved), this talk would be a great place to start.

The recordings of the talks are now available for your viewing pleasure. You will need the Silverlight 1.0 plugin in order to view them.

A few years ago, back when I was in college, there was an academic program from Microsoft (I don't remember what it was called) where you could get Windows and the Academic version of Visual Studio by going to the CS department office, checking out some CD's, and hoping that you didn't need to reinstall after you had to return them.

This morning, Microsoft is announcing a new program called DreamSpark that allows students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium to get Visual Studio Professional, Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio, Windows Server, and more....all for free! You just need to authenticate that you are indeed a student, and you will receive download access to these products.

This would probably be a good time to remind folks that the Visual Studio SDK and Visual Studio Shell Redistributable (which allow you to add custom extensions, languages, etc. to Visual Studio or "roll your own" custom IDE) are also free for everyone.

So, let's do the math. If you're a typical university student (who is most likely somewhere between broke and slightly over broke) .....

In case any of you passionate VSX developers out there also happen to be on Facebook, you might want to check out the VSX Group. It doesn't seem to be being used for much at the moment, but it is another way you can connect with other folks also extending Visual Studio.

If you open and build one of the samples in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK, and see the following error, DON'T PANIC (and don't forget your towel).

Failed to retrieve paths under VSTemplate for the specified registry hive.

This is a build error you will see if the Experimental hive has not been set up for your user account on the machine. To resolve the problem, simply do the following:

1. From the Start Menu, run Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK -> Tools -> "Reset the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Experimental hive"
2. Wait a few minutes for the process to complete (the command window will disappear when it's done)
3. Rebuild your project

In Visual Studio 2005 and earlier, the Experimental hive was set up when you installed the SDK.

Starting with the Visual Studio 2008 SDK, package development is per-user by default. The SDK installer will set up the Experimental hive only for the user who actually installed it. If you installed under a different user account than the one you use for development, you will have to "Reset" the hive with your account before you can begin package development.