INFO: Testing a Visual Studio add-in against new Visual Studio tools or extensions from Microsoft.

Author:	Carlos J. Quintero (Microsoft MVP)	Applies to:	Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Date:	March 2009		Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Updated:	March 2013		Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

Introduction

Microsoft Visual Studio provides some project types out of the box, such as VB.NET / C# projects, SQL Server database projects, Smart Device projects, etc. However, due to the development of new technologies on top of the .NET Framework (such as Silverlight, Windows Azure services, SharePoint services, etc.) Microsoft provides new project types for those new technologies through tools or extensions for Visual Studio that are downloaded separately and once installed are integrated inside it.

More Information

Most of the new project types are "flavored projects", which are project types derived from VB.NET/C# types but specialized. You can know the project flavor as explained in these articles:

• HOWTO: Get the project flavor (subtype) of a Visual Studio project from an add-in
• HOWTO: Guess the type of a Visual Studio project from an add-in or macro
  

New project types can introduce new icons for project/project items, new file types that can contain text, code or designers, etc. so your add-in can have features that may not work correctly and need to be tested to support them or fail gracefully.

Some of these extensions for Visual Studio from Microsoft are:

• Microsoft® Silverlight™ Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions, Version 1.1
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
• Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0

Note: Visual Studio extensions for SharePoint require a server version of Windows for development, they can't be installed or debugged on Windows XP/Vista. But just for the purposing of testing an add-in/package, you can install then on Windows XP/Vista with a registry trick explained here: Install VS 2005/2008 extensions for SharePoint on Windows XP/Vista OS.

And there are others that are still in CTP / Beta status at the time of this writing such as:

• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio January 2009 CTP
• Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Related articles

• PRB: Add-ins fail with 3rd party project kinds in Visual Studio .NET
• HOWTO: Get the project flavor (subtype) of a Visual Studio project from an add-in
• HOWTO: Guess the type of a Visual Studio project from an add-in or macro

Go back to the 'Resources for Visual Studio .NET extensibility' section for more articles like this

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