Automation and Extensibility for Visual Studio

You can extend Visual Studio by using macros, add-ins, VSPackages, and Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) extensions.

You can use macros and add-ins in Visual Studio without installing the Visual Studio Software Development Kit (SDK).

However, to use VSPackages and the Managed Extensibility Framework, you must install the Visual Studio SDK. For information about how to download the Visual Studio SDK, see Visual Studio Extensibility Developer Center on the MSDN Web site.

For information about how to extend Visual Studio by using the Visual Studio SDK, see Developing Visual Studio Extensions on the MSDN Web site.

In This Section

• Extending the Visual Studio Environment
  Links to topics that explain the various ways to extend and automate the IDE.

• Visual Studio Macros
  Links to topics that describe how to record, modify, and use macros in Visual Studio.

• Extending Visual Basic and Visual C# Projects
  Links to topics that explain how to use the Visual Basic and Visual C# project automation model.

• Visual C++ Extensibility Object Model
  Links to topics about the Visual C++ Code Model, Visual C++ Wizard Model, Visual C++ Project/Build model, and the Visual C++ Resource Editor model. Includes language reference for these automation object models.

• Visual Web Developer Extensibility
  Links to topics that explain how to use Visual Web Developer extensibility.

• Application Development in Visual Studio
  Links to reference topics for the automation models.

• Visual Studio SDK
  Describes the Visual Studio SDK, which lets you create and deploy features that resemble those in Visual Studio itself.

Related Sections

• Application Development in Visual Studio
  Links to topics about how to use Visual Studio to build applications.