Writing Visual Studio 2015 Extensions? You’ll want these Templates…

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This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Channel 9.

As our first post of the year, and the first "Extension Monday" of the year, this project seemed perfect to share...

Mario Hsiao recently released this great pack of Visual Studio Extension/Extensibility Project and Item Templates, ones that if you’re an Extension author you’ll want immediately…

Extensibility Templates

 

“Contains numerous item and project templates that makes it easier than ever to build Visual Studio extensions.

New Project Templates:

  • C# VSIX Library
  • C# VSIX Project
  • Visual Studio Shell Isolated

New VSIX Templates:

  • Control
  • Dialog Window
  • WCF Service
  • Window
  • Wizard

New VSPackage Templates:

  • VSPackage
  • Command
  • Tool Window
  • Editor
  • Service
  • Dialog Page
  • Option Page

Miscellaneous:

  • EULA.rtf
  • LICENSE
  • README.md

…” [Click through to download it or get it within Visual Studio]

Once you install it you’ll get a nice Getting Started readme;

“Getting Started

Visual Studio Extensions

Creating a Visual Studio Extension

This project enables developers to create an extension for Visual Studio. The solution contains a VSIX project that packages the extension into a VSIX file. This file is used to install an extension for Visual Studio.

Add new features

  1. Right-click the project node in Solution Explorer and select Add>New Item.
  2. In the Add New Item dialog box, expand the Extensibility node under Visual C# or Visual Basic.
  3. Choose from the available item templates: Visual Studio Package, Editor Items (Classifier, Margin, Text Adornment, Viewport Adornment), Command, Tool Window, Toolbox Control, and then click Add.

The files for the template that you selected are added to the project. You can start adding functionality to your item template, press F5 to run the project, or add additional item templates.

Run and debug

To run the project, press F5. Visual Studio will:

  • Build the extension from the VSIX project.
  • Create a VSIX package from the VSIX project.
  • When debugging, start an experimental instance of Visual Studio with the VSIX package installed.

In the experimental instance of Visual Studio you can test out the functionality of your extension without affecting your Visual Studio installation.

…”

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Here’s a snap of just some of the Templates

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See what I mean that you’ll want this ASAP? Smile