PRB: Add-ins fail with 3rd party project kinds in Visual Studio .NET

Author:	Carlos J. Quintero (Microsoft MVP)	Applies to:	Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002
Date:	July 2004		Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
Updated:	February 2009		Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
			Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Introduction

When you use projects kinds provided by 3rd parties, some features of Visual Studio .NET add-ins can fail not gracefully.

More Information

This is due to the fact that not all project kinds implement the properties used in VB.NET and C# projects and that add-ins use frequently. "Unmodeled" projects can fail to implement some usual properties or methods of the Project, ProjectItem, Window and Document objects. See: MSDN: Unmodeled Projects Overview.

Add-in developers should test carefully their add-ins with these kinds of projects to ensure that the add-ins fail gracefully when some property or method is not implemented.

This is a partial list of project kinds that add-in developers should test:

Setup Projects (built-in with Visual Studio .NET)
Enterprise Projects (built-in with Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Edition)
SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services projects (http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/)
Wise Setups Projects for Visual Studio .NET (http://www.wise.com)
InstallShield DevStudio projects (http://www.installshield.com/products/devstudio/)
Visual Perl projects (http://www.activestate.com)
Compuware DevPartner projects (http://www.compuware.com/products/devpartner/default.htm)

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

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

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