Visual Studio Hacks

Writing a Visual Studio Add-in #89

Chapter 12, Extending Visual Studio

|

399

HACK

I am not going to attempt anything that grandiose for this hack. Instead, you

will learn how to create a simple add-in that adds an item to the Tools menu

and to the right-click menu that will allow you to select text and then click

the menu item to surround that code with a

try...catch block.

Create the Project

To get started, you will first need to create a new add-in project by going to

File

➝ New ➝ Project and then selecting the add-in project from Other

Project ➝ Extensibility Projects. This dialog is shown in Figure 12-4.

This launches the Extensibility Wizard shown in Figure 12-5.

Click Next to move to the first screen of the Extensibility Wizard, shown in

Figure 12-6.

In the first screen of the wizard, you choose what language you want to use

to create this add-in. In this example, I will use C#, but you can also use

Visual Basic or Visual C++. After choosing the language, click Next and you

will see the Select an Application Host screen (shown in Figure 12-7).

On the Select An Application Host screen, you choose what application

hosts you want your add-in to be compatible with. The choices are the

Microsoft VSMacros IDE and the regular IDE. It is a good idea to enable

Figure 12-4. New add-in project

400

|

Chapter 12, ...