I'd like to:
start a new instance of visual studio
set up a project with a bunch of custom references
create a single source code file (*.vb and *.cs both need to work)
detect changes made to this file (i.e. when Save is used from VS)
This will hopefully allow me to provide my users with a good source code editor for when they write VB or C# 'scripts' in my app. All they should have to do is install VS (Express).
Is this possible? Where do I start? There's a lot of information out there about the VS API and SDK and it makes it very hard to find what I'm looking for.
Currently still writing code in VS 2008 for .NET 2.0, cannot upgrade to a .NET 4.0 for a while.
you can do this without the VS api; you can launch VS with the project/solution/source file as an argument (use devenv /? to see options) and have your app check the modified time of the file: when this time changes, it means the file was saved.
Related
We're working in quite a large project and is having a hard time getting people to configure their Visual Studio correct (tabs instead of spaces etc.). We found a great solution in using the EditorConfig extension for Visual Studio.
However there are still some developers that seems to ignore our request to install this extension to their Visual Studio and hence I'm wondering if there is any way to force an extension to be installed before a solution can be opened, maybe some setting in the .sln file?
No there is no such option built-in. If your machines are domain joined, you could push out the installer through System Center or domain logon scripts.
You could cheat and create a solution level pre-build step. Create a target file named: before.{solutionname.sln}.targets and store it next to your solution file. Check it into source control. In the targets file you can use standard MsBuild to see if the extension is installed (you'll need to check the file system probably) and if not present force the installation by calling vsixinstaller.exe to trigger the install.
I am trying to generate code scaffolding for an in-house API. I created a T4 template which includes several other templates for each code file to be generated. I then wrote a Visual Studio Extension (VSIX) with a WPF form to capture user input and initiate the transforming of the T4 template. I am doing all of this in Visual Studio Professional 2013.
This is what I followed to Invoke the Text Transformation in a VS Extension
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg586947%28v=vs.120%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
When testing the templates locally using Run custom tool, everything works perfectly. However, when testing the VS extension in an Experimental Instance of Visual Studio, the problem I am having is that after the transformation has been invoked [calling ITextTemplating.ProcessTemplate], the generated files are not placed into my open project. I verified that they exist in their appropriate folders in File Explorer.
I have searched high & low and can't find anything that talks about this. Any ideas?
The custom tool is using the Visual Studio API (DTE object) to add the generated files to the projects. I built something very similar and that is what I had to do. This project is a bit old but it is a great starting point for seeing how this can be done.
Basically you need to get a reference to the folder you want to add the new item to and then call AddFromFile. Also don't forget to save the project after you add all the items.
I create a new custom project type using a VSPackage project inheriting of MPF library (http://mpfproj11.codeplex.com/). As a result I obtain a .vsix but I need add this project type using a .msi. I'm using the Visual Studio 2010 Setup projet for it. In my setup project I add the content of the VS Package in the same directory where the .vsix put then, but I think Ineed to put in the registre the new type of project because when I use the setup , the project template does not come out in Visual Studio and when I give double click the file with extension of the type of new project and does not recognize it. When I look the registry after install the vsix, this was one of the things that I found diferent. I add this entries in my setup project but It's not working yet.I'm missing something else?
In the projecttemplatedir is the directory where I put the .dll of the project type, the vsixmifest and pkgdef. The project template is in [User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Templates\ProjectTemplates\[Name of new Project Type]\[projecttemplate.zip]
Best Regards
PS: The project type is for VS 2013 but I'm using the VS 2010 Setup project ;)
OK, so first the "don't"s of doing this:
In general, if you are installing via MSI you shouldn't be doing anything user-specific -- no writing in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, nor writing within their Documents folder, LocalAppData, or Visual Studio folders, etc. If you see yourself writing files or registry keys in either of those places, that should be your hint that there's a better way to do what you're trying to do. For what you've shown so far, this raises more than a few red flags for me.
Second, don't ever go writing keys into 12.0_Config. That part of the hive is nothing more than a cache that's built up from other parts of the registry and on-disk .pkgdef files from extensions. It's rebuilt in any number of senarios, including installing new extensions. Any writes there you should presume will get blown away at any time. If you need to write things there you should either (a) write in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[version] and run devenv /setup or (2) [preferred] put your keys in a .pkgdef inside your extension which gets merged into 12.0_Config for you automatically.
Now the dos:
You said you already had a .vsix produced by the SDK: you can put project templates in there. You can then register those templates in the .vsixmanifest and those will pull in. That's far easier than mucking around with files in Documents -- that's the user's directory...don't go playing with that.
Once you have a .vsix that does most of what you need, you should simply take the files within that and install the files in a folder within C:\Program Files [(x86)]\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions. Even better, you might just want to WiX toolset to build your installer, since it has built-in support for installing extensions. It also has built-in support for invoking the "/setup" process if that's what you need to do as well. Visual Studio Setup projects are no longer supported in newer versions of Visual Studio, so you're better off starting with a technology that isn't already obsolete. WiX is even what we use at Microsoft to do the setup work for Visual Studio itself, so it's definitely up to the task.
Last point: almost everything when it comes to Visual Studio extensibility can be done with a VSIX directly, so presume there's a good way to do something that way before falling back to an MSI. Internally, we can register the entire C# and VB language services with just a VSIX -- they're quite powerful.
I found the answer in this link Registering Project and Item Templates. I set projecttemplatedir entry with
[User]\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Templates\ProjectTemplates[Name of new Project Type][projecttemplate.zip] that is where i put the project template.
I would like to run a script after files with certain extensions are saved in visual studio. I am wondering where the event handler for saving a file is located in the Visual Studio SDK API.
Can anyone point me in the right direction in terms of API documentation for visual studio extensions. I have found the Visual Studio SDK Reference but some direction or sample examples would be helpful.
I want to create partial designer files that are usually generated when the project is built (Mono for Android Project), my files will have temporary values, but are only intended to enable intellisense without building the entire project. I can run the process manually right now, but I would like to trigger the script when .xml or .axml files are saved.
It think I need to work with IVsRunningDocTableEvents.OnAfterSave method, but I'm not sure about how I get the handle on the running doc table, or how I filter the files I want to run the event for. This is my first attempt at using the Visual Studio SDK.
The event handler for saving files is:
Dte.Events.DocumentEvents.DocumentSaved
Note you need to keep a reference to Events and DocumentEvents in order for it to actually work. Here is some information on that: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/br/vsx/thread/0857a868-e650-42ed-b9cc-2975dc46e994
Here is a link to 30 sample projects that illustrate all kinds of functionality for Visual Studio Add-Ins:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Visual-Studio-2010-SDK-ddfe1372
You can find some getting started informatin here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ff677564.aspx
I have got some old sources written in Visual Basic. There are *.bas, *.cls, *.frm and *.vbp files. As I understand, vbp is a project file. But I cannot open it with my Visual Studio 2008.
What version of VS should I install to open *.vbp file? Google says it is Visual Studio 6, but I am not sure and I cannot find Visual Studio 6 for downloading. Is there any publicly available free edition of Visual Studio 6 with Visual Basic?
Thanks.
vbp is indeed a VB 5/6 Project File.
VS6/VB5/VB6 are not free, so if you want to build the project you will need to spend $5 on ebay.
The VB5 Control Creation Edition (build COM components only) was the only free version MS released.
Older versions of VS.net included a way to import a VBP and upgrade it to VB.NET, but YMMV (significantly).
Edit; If you just want to look at the source/project structure all the files except .frx are plain ascii.
If you have an MSDN subscription, then VB6 is available as a free download. Otherwise try ebay like Alex suggests, but it usually costs significantly more than $5.
Microsoft recommends users get a 3rd party conversion program called ArtinSoft,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ff793478
When opening the vbp file which is the project file, you will most likely have an import wizard show up, which after trying to import the project it will likely tell you there are a bunch of dependencies vb6 used to use which .net does not and will error out. You need to have vb5/6 installed or at least the dependency files installed in order to proceed with the import. You can view source code from the plain ascii text files of the .frM files.
To get a working copy of visual basic follow the following steps.
after much research I found out that the original Vb6 was distributed as a disk set, all CD's are just ISO files built up of folders and files. You can get a copy of an original ISO here. There is a google drive version floating around on the web of the ISO but personally that just seems really sketchy to me.
https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-visual-bas/60
in order to use the ISO you will need to unzip the ISO with WinRar, so download a copy of WinRar (its a widely used file archiver tool)
follow the install instructions here https://youtu.be/LXvd8IRw_ZI
"How to Install Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows 7/8/8.1/10" by "Matthew Marcelo"
** be sure to run the installation as administrator ** .\Micrsosoft Visual Basic 6.0\extracted\SETUP.EXE
after getting everything installed I realized I needed a copy of the MSDN library (version October 1999) which is the developer documentation for using VB6, that is found here https://winworldpc.com/product/msdn/october-1999
--
if you are like me and had to get VB6 working because of a very old legacy project and you had no clue what .OCX (controller) files were, and you got a bunch of error messages when you open the main project .VBP file, when you get ahold of the files and install them, installing them as admin usually does the trick by making a batch file, or running an administrator powershell/cmd window
regsvr32.exe \path\to\file.ocx
you need Visual Basic, not Visual Studio to open these files. or you can open it using a normal text editor like sublime text file separately. but if you want to open it like a project then you should use Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 / 5.0 . There is a portable version too.
If you still want to open .vbp file using visual studio try to use VB tools for Visual Studio. I think it will help you.