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Where do you wish you could extend Visual Studio?

  • Artigo

Welcome to the Visual Studio for Devices team blog :)

One of my first projects in my new role is to think about extensibility in Visual Studio as it relates to devices and device projects. In using previous versions of Visual Studio where do you wish you could hook into it to make your device development experience better? What are the types of things you've wanted to do? What could we do to make your lives easier when it comes to adding new components, menu items, projects, emulators, etc?

We already have a bunch of stuff in the works, but this is your chance to make sure that we're targeting the right scenarios for our next release. Use the comments link to share your thoughts!

[Author: Neil Enns]

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2004
    I have spent several weeks trying to use VS7.1 extensibility model to create a macro that would automate building a CF deployment project. The extensibilty model for deployment projects is among the worst documented and the least flexible. On top of this deployment projects are very hard to customize. I have not checked what (if anything) has changed in 8.0, but in 7.x it was pitiful
  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2004
    I'm interested in creating my own SmartTags. Possible changing the way some of the existing smarttags work.
  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2004
    I agree with Alex Feinman's comment above. Why don't you provide deployment template project for NETCF apps which includes adding the app to the device menu (if available) and the device Add/Remove Programs?

    This may be slightly OT, but I wish the emulator was integrated into VS.NET just like the Solution Explorer|Class View.
  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2004
    In Visual Studio 2005 we support a new project type which allows you to create a "deployment project" (a device CAB) file in a similar fashion to how you can create desktop MSI projects today. You can visually drag-n-drop items such as files, registry entries, etc. as well as create shortcuts on the device Start menu (your app will also automatically show up in Add/Remove programs).

    Wrt the emulator, we have strongly considered supporting docking the emulator in the VS IDE, but unfortunately it turns out to be a significant amount of work. We do however support "Always On Top" in the new ARM emulator.

    [Author: Ori Amiga]
  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2004
    It would be cool to have hooks onto which I can hang my own project system and compiler for a custom language implementation.
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2004
    It would be really great, if you create a pluggable compiler system, i mean use also other compilers than the default one
    For example: develop a c++ application using the VS2005 IDE, but use a different compiler, i.e. for generating optimized 64bit code.

    Another scenario:
    again, use the VS2005 IDE for writing code, but use a different compiler for compiling into native code for mobile devices (WinCE, Symbian or anything) when you hit CTRL+SHIFT+B (Rebuilt Solution in VS.Net2003). The paramerters must be specified, of course.

    this would also be useful, if a new platform is introduced, but Visual Studio doesn't provide a compiler for this new platform. (i.e. VS03 doesn't provide compilers for AMD64 or IA64; i know that VS2005 does provide these compilers).