Aaron Marten

[Update 04.02.2007: Added note about running under the debugger] [Update 03.14.2007: Updated content for Visual Studio 2005 SDK Version 4.0] [Update 01.23.2007: Added note about needing VC++] [Update 09.15.2006: Updated content for Visual Studio 2005...

A few years ago, back when I was in college , there was an academic program from Microsoft (called 'MSDN Academic Alliance') where you could get Windows and the Academic version of Visual Studio by going to the CS department office, checking out some...

I received an email asking for a little more information on what exactly the Event Toaster Powertoy is and does. First, a little background information... What gets installed with the Visual Studio SDK? When you download and run the VSSDK install...

One of the most common requests I see on the VS extensibility newsgroup (and in my Inbox) is "where can I get a version of flex and bison that will work with the VSIP Language Wizard"? Here is how I recommend you set up your machine if you plan on writing...

I received the following question in my email this morning: "I'd like to create a new command that appears on the Project/Add context menu but I don't know where to begin. I'm not clear if I can create an OleMenuCommand in 2003 or if that's just in 2005...

If you ask people who know much about computer security, they will usually recommend that you perform all your common tasks as a normal user and only run as an Administrator when you absolutely need to. The idea is that even if a hacker or virus exploits...

In case you haven't seen this yet, Gaston Milano has released a Xaml viewer/editor that runs inside Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. Very cool indeed! I set this up on a test machine and got some of the other VS Extensibility folks to check it out. Needless...

An extensibility kit dealing with extending Visual Studio Team System has been posted on the Microsoft downloads page. This version is designed to work with the December 2004 CTP release from a few weeks ago. Check it out and get started adding your custom...

There will be a chat on Extensibility (VSIP, Add-Ins, Macros, Policy, etc...) on January 19th, 2005, at 1:00 PM PST. Hope to see you there! You can also add a reminder to your Outlook calendar .

I've been seeing a lot of emails and posts about people wondering how they can get VSIP 2005 Beta 1 to work with the December 2004 CTP release of VS 2005. The answer is that you can't and shouldn't. When changes are made to interfaces, classes, assemblies...

Well, Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 is finally out the door. It is certainly a high-quality Beta, but, like any piece of software, not without it's flaws. You may notice that if you install MSDN (which I'm sure most users do), the Visual Studio Addin Wizard...

The Visual Studio Extensbility User Education (VSXUE) team, lead by Jim Glass, has started their own blog . The first few posts look pretty promising. Check it out!

In the Visual Studio 2005 SDK Version 3 , we've included a toolset which should be of value to you if you've ever considered integrating a language into Visual Studio using C#. In the past, if you wanted to do this it was up to you to "wire-up" your...

Earlier this week, we released the December 2005 CTP version of the Visual Studio SDK . We're calling it a CTP simply because we don't plan to have all the features and samples from this cycle completed for another few months. However, there are a few...

Now that the summer is over officially (it's back around 55°F here in Seattle ), it's time to get back to work. J For those of you who still haven’t taken a sneak peek at the features coming to VSIP in 2005 by downloading the Beta SDK, here is a preview...

[Update Jan 04, 2008: Made <system.codedom> instructions more clear. Thanks to Cory Bloyd for the suggestion.] If you've had the opportunity to work with WPF/.NET 3.0 yet, you've likely run into the x:Class attribute in XAML. If you specify a...

***Disclaimer: This information is about Visual Studio 2010 only. The following may not be accurate for future releases.*** One of the new features we introduced with the Visual Studio 2008 Isolated Shell was the concept of a pkgdef file . Pkgdef is...

The vice president heading up the Developer Division here at Microsoft, S. Somasegar , has a blog entry about VSIP .

Wilco Bauwer has been working for several months on an implementation of the Ruby language that targets the CLR. This past weekend, thanks to the Visual Studio SDK, he managed to get some integration with Visual Studio up and running. ( Screenshot ) Nice...

Hmm, I've been slacking off a bit on the blog, haven't I. Oh well, time to delve back into another VSIP lesson. In addition to package loading and getting/calling services provided by the environment and other packages, cookies are also a pretty important...

I've posted the Interface of the Week article on IVsMonitorSelection . Enjoy! I'd be interested in your feedback, especially if you think short articles like this would be helpful to continue with.

I've decided to start a new feature that should be of some assistance to all of you out in VSIP land. It will be called "Interface of the Week". My goal is to feature a new interface from Visual Studio that you can use to write the next great extension...

There will be a web chat with some members of the Visual Studio team tomorrow afternoon . Please join us if you can!! From the description: “Add-ins, macros, and packages - oh my! Join members of the Visual Studio team for a discussion on the things...

This tool has been out for a few months now from Microsoft UK, but I thought I'd bring it to your attention. CoverageEye is a free tool to gather code coverage data on your .NET assemblies. Code coverage is one of the best ways to ensure that you're executing...

This is a bit of old news, but in case you missed it, the transcript for the Visual Studio 2005 Extensibility chat has been posted on MSDN. Enjoy! (Link fixed on 10/24/04)