Language Services

The purpose of a language service in Visual Studio is to provide language-specific support for editing source code in the integrated development environment (IDE). You implement a language service as part of a VSPackage.

This section discusses the structure and implementation of a Visual Studio language service.

In This Section

• Language Service Essentials
  Provides important information about how to develop language services to integrate a programming language into Visual Studio.

• Developing a Language Service
  Provides links to topics that can help you create a language service.

• Syntax Coloring
  Provides information about supporting syntax highlighting in a language service.

• Implementing a Native-Code Language Service By Using Babel
  Provides information about how to use the Babel Package to implement a language service in Visual Studio in native Visual C++, and lists the features that are supported with the Babel Package.

• Implementing a Language Service By Using the Managed Package Framework
  Provides information about how to use the managed package framework (MPF) to implement a full-featured language service in managed code.

• Supporting Symbol-Browsing Tools
  Describes libraries and tools that enable you to browse tree views of symbols in the IDE.

Related Sections

• Walkthrough: Creating a Language Service Package
  Provides a step-by-step guide to using the Language Service Wizard to create a language service built on the unmanaged Babel language framework.

• Editors
  Provides an overview of the editor that you can create or customize in Visual Studio.

• Language Service Support for Debugging
  Provides information about and a link to the Visual Studio Debugging SDK, which contains the information that is required to create and customize debugger components used to debug programs.