Ok, you can find a full detailed comparison here (there are also links to the previous parts in the series). But basically, add-ins were available as the VS extension type from the very first versions of the VS and built as the COM components. Later on, some limitations were discovered in that approach, so the … Read more
Output Window To write to the “General” output window in Visual Studio, you need to do the following: IVsOutputWindow outWindow = Package.GetGlobalService( typeof( SVsOutputWindow ) ) as IVsOutputWindow; Guid generalPaneGuid = VSConstants.GUID_OutWindowGeneralPane; // P.S. There’s also the GUID_OutWindowDebugPane available. IVsOutputWindowPane generalPane; outWindow.GetPane( ref generalPaneGuid , out generalPane ); generalPane.OutputString( “Hello World!” ); generalPane.Activate(); // Brings … Read more
Getting Started with Extending Visual Studio The Visual Studio SDK for 2010 The VS2010 beta forums Visual Studio 2010 New Features, Extensibility Points and Partner Opportunities Most of the information on add-ins is in the SDK.
Extensions (if deployed as VSIX) will be installed to the user´s profile; each extension will be installed into a folder with a random name, for instance: %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\Extensions\s5lxc0ne.1kp If you want to obtain the package installation path at runtime, you can obtain that information from the assembly that defines the Package class. static string GetAssemblyLocalPathFrom(Type type) … Read more