Notification window is a new added feature in visual studio 2013. I have an isolated shell application created using visual studio 2013 shell.
Is it possible to extend the Notification window and show notification or information related to our isolated shell application ?
The answer to your question would be yes, however Microsoft does not expose the functionality officially. You can expose these structures yourself, if you're super interested.
The way you can do it, is kind of hackish, but it will work, at least for VS2013. Basically, you need to either reference an internal dll (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.UI.Internal.dll), or just copy/paste the relevant structures into your own program, as Kevin has done: User Notifications in the Visual Studio 2013 SDK.
If that is done, you can exploit the interfaces: https://github.com/kevfromireland/visual-studio-2013-notifications-example/blob/master/UserNotificationDemo/UserNotificationDemoPackage.cs
var notificationService = (IVsUserNotificationsService)GetService(
typeof(SVsUserNotificationsService));
var notifcationManager = notificationService.
GetUserNotificationsManagerAsync()
.GetResult();
var vsUserNotificationsManager = (IVsUserNotificationsManager) notifcationManager;
var pic = new RedditPicProvider().GetAwwPicture();
vsUserNotificationsManager.
AddUserNotification(ExampleProvider.Guid,
pic.Url,
pic.Title,
pic.Url,
(uint) NotificationServerity.Critical, isTransient: true);
RegisterNotificationProvider(vsUserNotificationsManager);
Related
How do I write an extension to Visual Studio that will run during debug?
I saw kinds of UI or code editor options, but not the software events.
DTE.Events.DebuggerEvents gives you access to VS debugger events:
events = DTE.Events;
debuggerEvents = events.DebuggerEvents;
debuggerEvents.OnEnterRunMode += OnEnterRunMode;
Can I create an extension for Visual Studio that runs in the background as soon as the user opens the Visual Studio IDE? For example, I am building an extension that gets the current active file address in Visual Studio (with C#), but I would like this extension to always run in the background without having to be activated by the user clicking a button or pressing some key combination.
Is this possible, and if so, what is the best way of doing it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Erfan
Since you tagged your question with visual-studio-2010 I assume you are working on an "Add-in" rather than a "VSPackage Extensions".
In this case, you can use the OnConnection event handler.
If you are working on a VSPackage Extensions, you can use the attribute ProvideAutoLoad.
Just search for these, you will find sufficient information. Both ways are also described shortly here under "How can I run my add-in code in a VSPackage?"
For Extension add following attribute to Package class, this will load the extension when a solution is not open in visual studio. I have tested this with VS 2015 and 2017.
[ProvideAutoLoad(UIContextGuids80.NoSolution)]
For VS 2010 and higher the recommended extensibility approach is a package (VS 2015 won't allow add-ins).
To get the package loaded when Visual Studio is loaded see HOWTO: Autoload a Visual Studio package.
Once loaded, your package may be interested in two different kind of selection change events:
To get notified when the selection in the Solution Explorer changes, get the IVsMonitorSelection interface and call the AdviseSelectionEvents/UnadviseSelectionEvents and provide a class that implements the IVsSelectionEvents interface.
To get notified when the active window changes (which can be a document window or a toolwindow), implement the IVsWindowFrameNotify interface.
Let a "Breakpoints" window (by default opened by Debug>Windows>Breakpoints [ctrl+B, D]) serve as an example. Basically I select few breakpoints in it and I would like to know in my add-in which elements in this window are selected. I am aware that I can get collection of breakpoints in project but I would like to know what elements are selected in "Breakpoints" window.
"Is it possible to get selected items in window or even access its content at all?"
Also I am not sure whenever or not should I post a separate question for this but is there actually a way to capture user activity in IDE like for example capturing an event when user sets (adds) a breakpoint?
Originally I also asked if is it possible to achieve certain things in Visual Studio Express Edition. But this part is irrevelant.
Conclusion:
(after reading jessehouwing's answer)
I guess it is not possible using an Add-ins. Use VSPackages isntead. Also Add-ins are deprecated as of Visual Studio 2013 version.
As mentioned in my comments, what you're trying to accomplish is explicitly prohibited in the Visual Studio Express edition and is a violation of it's license. To extend the product, you need to have at least Visual Studio Professional Edition. many of the extensibility points will actively refuse any communication with 3rd party add-ins.
Almost all the things you're asking are possible using Visual Studio Extensibility once you've installed the professional edition. Products like OzCode show that almost everything is possible. Remember that most features inside visual studio are themselves extensions of the product.
Your question, indeed a whole list of questions, is indeed not the way to ask something on StackOverflow. I can give you some pointers to the documentation, which you've probably already found, and maybe to some open source products that themselves extend parts of Visual Studio that can serve as examples, but from there you'll have to piece something together until you're able to ask more specific questions.
Events you can subscribe to, the breakpoints are a CommandEvents I suspect.
Manipulating windows inside Visual Studio
Projects that extend the debugger that might serve as an example:
PyTools (debugger for Python inside Visual Studio)
Node.js tools for Visual studio (extending the Immediate Window)
But there is no easy answer to your question that fits inside this window. I'd suggest you use a tool like Reflector to look at how Microsoft accomplishes certain things (most of Visual Studio Extensibility is written in .NET anyways) and to look at open source projects that extend visual studio behavior. There are quite a few out there on Codeplex.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to accomplish and how it's different from the Breakpoints features inside Visual Studio Professional and up.
I suggest you ask your question in the Visual Studio Extensibility forums over on MSDN, which is in a collaborative forum format, instead of a Q&A format, allowing people to answer your question bit by bit.
In Visual Studio 2010, is it possible to display a start/welcome page when opening a solution file?
I'd like to have some way to show build information to new developers joining the team.
Have you already considered writing your own extension for Visual Studio?
Soma Somasegar has pointed out where to start in his blog here.
You will need to install the Visual Studio SDK (online documentation here) from samples at MSDN.
I have not done this myself yet, but I know that you can create tool windows that already load with Visual Studio. You can request a notification when a solution is loaded and then execute your own custom code.
(I just read about the notfications yesterday in Rico Mariani's blog).
Should be possible. :-)
I wanna track visual studio activities like projects opened, files opened in visual studio ide and projects build etc. How can i achieve the same?
Start your visual studio IDE using /Log switch.
>devenv /Log c:\log_devenv.xml
To write the user activities into isolated shell of studio use the activitylog service which is exposed by studio. Sample is given below.
IVsActivityLog log = GetService(typeof(SVsActivityLog)) as IVsActivityLog;
if (log == null) return;
int hr = log.LogEntry((UInt32)__ACTIVITYLOG_ENTRYTYPE.ALE_INFORMATION,this.ToString(),string.Format(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture,"Entering initializer for: {0}", this.ToString()));
For more details use this link How to: Write to the Activity Log