Windows Developer Power Tools

8.10 Sharing Your Visual Studio Goodies with the Content Installer Power Toys

There are a number of ways to extend Visual Studio 2005: you can write add-ins and visualizers, create code snippets and macros, and much more. But after spending time extending Visual Studio, you’ll naturally want to share your creation with the world. That’s where the Content Installer Power Toys become useful.

Visual Studio 2005 includes a new feature called the Content Installer that can be used to automatically install extensions using special installer files with the .vsi extension. The Visual Studio Content Installer Power Toys make it extremely easy to create .vsi files that install any number of the following items:

• Add-ins

• Code libraries

• Toolbox controls

• Debugger visualizers

• Help files

• Macro projects

• Samples

• Settings files

• Snippet directories

• Code snippets

• Templates

Visual Studio Content Installer Power Toys at a Glance
Tool	Visual Studio Content Installer Power Toys
Version covered	Beta
Home page	http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=6b1aceda-e613-4dac-beeb-0cd8ad8f2d41
Power Tools page	http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/141
Summary	Power Toys that let you quickly and easily package Visual Studio extensions for easy distribution
License type	Shared Source License
Online resources	Message board, bug tracker
Supported Frameworks	Visual Studio 2005

Getting Started

Download and install the .msi from the tool’s ...