Controlling Projects and Solutions

Visual Studio add-ins are deprecated in Visual Studio 2013. You should upgrade your add-ins to VSPackage extensions. For more information about upgrading, see FAQ: Converting Add-ins to VSPackage Extensions.

The Visual Studio automation model provides objects and collections that enable you to control the solution, projects, and the project items within the project, regardless of the programming language in which the application was written.

In addition to this core, language-agnostic project automation model, each programming language has its own project automation model which provides access to features unique to that language.

Objects and Collections

• The Solution2 object and the Projects collection (which is returned by Projects and Projects) contain a reference to the solution, as well as references to all projects in that solution, respectively.

• The ProjectItems collection represents all items contained in a project (Project), with the exception of virtual projects. The ProjectItem object represents individual items within the project.

A virtual project is one that is not associated with a particular project but is rather associated with the solution. A solution can contain two additional virtual projects: the Solution Items and the Miscellaneous Files projects.

To learn more about	See
Controlling the solution, and projects within the solution.	Controlling the Solution and Its Projects
How to programmatically create solution and project build configurations.	How to: Create Solution and Project Build Configurations
Dealing with projects that do not support the Visual Studio automation model.	Unmodeled Projects Overview
Working with the virtual projects — Solution Items and Miscellaneous Items projects.	Working with Solution Items and Miscellaneous Items
Saving solution and project variable values between integrated development environment (IDE) sessions.	Persisting Information in Projects and Solutions
Manipulating Solution Explorer.	How to: Control Solution Explorer
Controlling Visual Basic and Visual C# projects.	Introduction to Project Extensibility
Controlling Visual C++ projects.	Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProject and Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProjectEngine.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Add and Handle Commands

How to: Create an Add-In

Walkthrough: Creating a Wizard

Concepts

Solutions and Projects

Automation Object Model Chart

Other Resources

Creating and Controlling Environment Windows

Creating Add-ins and Wizards

Automation and Extensibility Reference