Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 4, Customizing Visual Studio

#33 Add an External Tool

HACK

ILDASM will now be added as an external tool to the Tools menu. You can

click on the ILDASM link and the tool will open with your assembly already

loaded in the tool. Adding external tools for utilities that you commonly use

is a great way to save time and avoid the hassle of pointing the tool to your

assembly or file.

External Tool Arguments

In the ILDASM example, I used the Target Path argument to pass the name

and location of the project’s assembly to the external tool. The 15 different

argument variables that you can use when configuring an external tool are

listed in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1. External tool argument variables

Name Argument Description

Item Path

$(ItemPath) The path to the active document.

Item Directory

$(ItemDir) The directory where the active document is

located.

Item File Name

$(ItemFileName) The name of the active document.

Item Extension

$(ItemExt) The file extension of the active document.

Current Line

$(CurLine) The line position where the cursor is currently

resting.

Current Column

$(CurCol) The column position where the cursor is currently

resting.

Current Text

$(CurText) Either the word where the cursor is located or a

single line of selected text.

Target Path

$(TargetPath) The path (including filename) to the current tar-

get. (The target is what your project is compiling

into, e.g., the assembly.)

Target

Directory