Isolated Shell Entry Point Parameters (C++)
When a Visual Studio shell-based application starts, it calls the Start entry point of the Visual Studio shell. The following settings can be overridden in the call to the Start entry point of the shell. For a description of each setting, see Modifying the Isolated Shell By Using the .Pkgdef File.
AddinsAllowed
AllowsDroppedFilesOnMainWindow
AppName
CommandLineLogo
DefaultHomePage
DefaultProjectsLocation
DefaultSearchPage
DefaultUserFilesFolderRoot
DisableOutputWindow
HideMiscellaneousFilesByDefault
HideSolutionConcept
NewProjDlgInstalledTemplatesHdr
NewProjDlgSlnTreeNodeTitle
SolutionFileCreatorIdentifier
SolutionFileExt
UserFilesSubFolderName
UserOptsFileExt
The Visual Studio Shell Isolated template creates a source file, solutionName.cpp, where solutionName is the solution name for the application. This file defines the main entry point for the application, the _tWinMain function. This function invokes the Start entry point of the shell.
You can change the behavior of the application by changing these settings when the application starts.
Parameters
The Start entry point of the Visual Studio shell defines five parameters. Do not change the first four parameters. The fifth parameter takes a settings override list. The Start entry point of the shell is called from the main entry point of an application.
The Start entry point of the shell has the following signature.
typedef int (__cdecl *STARTFCN)(LPSTR, LPWSTR, int, GUID *, WCHAR *pszSettings);
If you do not want to override any application settings, leave the value of the settings override parameter as a null pointer.
To override one or more settings, pass a Unicode string that contains the settings to be overridden. The string is a semicolon-separated list of name-value pairs. Each pair contains the name of the setting to override, followed by an equal sign (=), followed by the value to apply to the setting.
Note
Do not include whitespace in the Unicode strings.
For boolean settings, the following strings represent the value true; all other strings represent the value false. These strings are case-insensitive.
+
1
-1
on
true
yes
Example
To disable add-ins and change the default projects location for your application, you can set the last parameter to "AddinsAllowed=false;DefaultProjectsLocation=%USERPROFILE%\temp".