VSX Team Blog

The VSX Team Blog Is Moving!

vsxteam — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:03:49 GMT

We aren’t going away -- we’re just moving to a better home. To give you even more news, articles, and walkthroughs on Visual Studio, the VSX Team blog is moving to become part of The Visual Studio Blog. As part of The Visual Studio Blog, we’ll be joining the rest of the Visual Studio Platform Team in blogging not only about Visual Studio extensibility, but other topics such as the core IDE and UI, the editor, the project system, MSBuild, and more.

So please make sure to update your RSS readers to our new home.

See you all at the new blog location – http://blogs.msdn.com/visualstudio!

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 SDK are available on the download center!

vsxteam — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:30:00 GMT

The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 bits went live this morning for everyone!

You can get access to all our Beta 2 products from the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

The SDK is also available from that location. Start using it and we're looking forward to seeing your extensions on the Visual Studio Gallery.

Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

vsxteam — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:15:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 just released moments ago!

After taking a lot of feedback, suggestions, and fixing a ton of bugs, along with improving the performance, we just released a solid Beta 2.

MSDN subscribers will be able to download Beta 2 today and on Wednesday, it will be available for general download on the Microsoft Download Center. The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 SDK is also available and can be downloaded from the same MSDN location.

Additionally, we've updated the Visual Studio Gallery. Check out the new branding and the look and feel!

Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 2 Readme

vsxteam — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:09:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 2 Supplemental Readme

The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Documentation is available here.

The DSL Tools for Beta 2 is available here.

This posting contains additional readme and known issues about the Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 2 release. These are in addition to the known issues that were included in the installation of the Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 2.

ISSUE: Building a project that generates a VSIX file fails when including a large file in the project.

WORK AROUND: This happens when a file greater than 10 MB is added to the project and marked to be included in the VSIX. To work around the issue, build your solution using MSBuild from the commandline. This issue will be fixed in the release after Beta 2.

ISSUE: Creation of a Custom Editor with uppercase unicode letters in the project name fails.

WORK AROUND: To work around this issue, avoid using only uppercase unicode letter in the project name.

ISSUE: Isolated shell projects display unnecessary item templates without an icon.

WORK AROUND: There is no work around to this issue. The item templates are benign and do not affect the Isolated Shell.

ISSUE: Deleting Project or Item templates through the Manifest Editor does not remove the template from the VSIX output.

WORK AROUND: To work around this issue, manually remove the template zip file in your project when removing the Project or Item template through the manifest editor.

ISSUE: The copy build task in the VSSDK.targets file copies the project or item templates to the Local Application Data location instead of the bin/debug folder.

WORK AROUND: If the desired output location is the bin/debug folder and not the Local Application Data folder, follow these steps:

1. Disable copying to Local Application Folder by updating the project file:

<DeployVSTemplates>false</DeployVSTemplates>

2. To enable copying to bin/debug, add the following to the project file:

<CreateVsixContainerDependsOn>$(CreateVsixContainerDependsOn);GetMyTemplates</CreateVsixContainerDependsOn>

</PropertyGroup>

<VSIXSubPath>SharePoint\2010\1033\</VSIXSubPath>

</VSIXSourceItem>

</ItemGroup>

</Target>

ISSUE: Unable to add a reference to your existing VSIX project through the manifest designer.

WORK AROUND: This issue occurs when a developer tries to add a new assembly to their VSIX project and uses the manifest designer to reference the same project. To work around this, add the new assembly in a separate project and reference that through the manifest editor. This issue will be fixed in the first release after Beta 2.

ISSUE: Unable to use Createpkgdef to generate a pkgdef file from registration attributes.

WORK AROUND: When using registration attributes in your code to auto generate a pkgdef file, you will need to add the registration attribute code found in the MPF Sources in your VS SDK install. The source can be found in the VS SDK installation folder under VisualStudioIntegration\Common\Source\CSharp\RegistrationAttributes.

ISSUE: Unable to edit a xaml file.

WORK AROUND: The reference assemblies installed by the Visual Studio SDK are a slimmed down version of the full reference assemblies. When editing a xaml file, this mismatch may cause the editor to not allow users to edit their files xaml files inside of VS.

To workaround this issue, copy the reference assemblies that your project requires into the Global Assembly Cache.

ISSUE: UI DLLs do not get copied to the correct folder for C++ projects.

WORK AROUND: When building a C++ project (including the Visual Studio Isolated Shell), the UI DLL does not get copied to the locale specific folder (such as \1033). This causes the menu items of the packages to now appear in the Visual Studio IDE.

To workaround this issue, manually copy and deploy your UI.DLL into the locale specific folder.

ISSUE: Visual Studio 10 Beta 2 may fail to load some MEF assemblies that are installed as part of a VSIX. This issue affects MEF assemblies defining new types that are used in MEF metadata. For example, an extension defining its custom text tag derived from the Visual Studio 2010 Editor's TextMarkerTag type.

WORK AROUND: Create a .pkgdef file and place it in the same folder where the MEF assembly is located. Add the following two lines to the pkgdef file and replace the {GUID} part with any unique GUID. Then restart Visual Studio.

[$RootKey$\BindingPaths\{guid}]

"$PackageFolder$"=""

How do I convert my Beta 1 VSIX manifest to Beta 2?

vsxteam — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:57:00 GMT

We received a lot of feedback from the community and other developers about the Extension Manager VSIX manifest and made some changes in Beta 2. Some of the changes included:

Making the schema less strict so elements don't need to be in a particular order
Following XML standard casing
Clearing up ambiguity about supported VS editions and products since the manifest works for isolated shell applications as well
Adding support for per machine installations (remember, per user installs are still preferred and a better user experience for customers getting your extension)
Adding version info for the VSIX manifest
and lots of little changes to make things easier and better.

Ofcourse, these changes will require you to update your Beta 1 manifest files. Instead of manually tweaking your XML, we've built a nifty cool VSIX Manifest Converter tool to help you move your Beta 1 manifest to Beta 2.

The tool is attached to this blog post. To use it, just run the exe in the directory where your VSIX or extension.vsixmanifest file is. The tool will automatically convert the manifest. If you have a VSIX, it'll crack open the VSIX, update the manifest and repackage your VSIX.

New Editor Samples for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

vsxteam — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:07:00 GMT

Chris Granger, one of our Visual Studio Editor Program Managers just posted some more Editor goodies on code gallery.

Here’s a quick wrap up of the samples and walkthrough that just got posted:

Editor Extension Hands On Lab

This lab takes you through the end to end scenario of creating and editor extension, by building an extension that displays walkthrough content from an XML file directly in the editor as green boxes.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/extensionHoL2009

Highlight Word

This is a sample extension to the Visual Studio 2010 Editor that uses tagging and adornments to highlight all occurrences of the word currently under the caret.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/highlightword

Caret Fish Eye

This is a sample extension to the Visual Studio 2010 Editor that visually shrinks lines that are farther away from the caret.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/caretfisheye

Hyperlink Extension

This is a sample Visual Studio 2010 extension that provides syntax-highlighting for hyperlinks as well as the ability to ctrl-click on the link.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/hyperlinksample

Diff Classifier

This is a sample Visual Studio 2010 Classifier that provides syntax highlighting for standard diff/patch files.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/diffclassifier

More samples, walkthroughs, and guidelines for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 are available on our VSX code gallery site.

Try out the new editor samples and let us know what you think!

How do I create and share a template on the Visual Studio Gallery?

vsxteam — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:58:00 GMT

One of the questions we've been getting from developers is, "How do I build a project or item template?"

Our Dev lead, Pedro Silva put together four great blogs on how to create, build, and share your template on the Visual Studio Gallery.

Creating an Item Template:

The blog posts are about creating an item template but the steps are very similar if you want to create a project template.

Take a look at his detailed blog post and start building your own templates! :)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 SDK Documentation is now available!

vsxteam — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:46:00 GMT

The Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 SDK documentation just got released! You can access it from here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb166441(VS.100).aspx

There's still a lot more to cover but this set of docs will get you started with what's changed in VS 2010. The team will also continue to blog on this site and our own personal blogs about other cool extensibility features so keep an eye out for that.

Tangible T4 Editor for VS 2010 Beta 2

vsxteam — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:34:00 GMT

The Tangible T4 Editor is now available for VS 2010 Beta 2. Try out the T4 Editor when working with your VS 2010 DSLs. You can download the T4 Editor from the Visual Studio Gallery or look for it in the Extension Manager Online tab.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 DSL SDK Beta1 is now available!

vsxteam — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:16:00 GMT

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 DSL SDK Beta1 has just shipped and is available for download!

If you're interested in Domain Specific Languages and want to use tools to build your own DSLs, download it and try it out. You will need the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 bits and the Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta1 installed first.

The DSL team also launched their code gallery site which contains more information and samples to get you started with DSLs.