I've seen lots of MEF code for plugging into custom apps, but I am yet to find out how to write a plugin for VS2010 using MEF. I was under the impression that the new IDE supported this.
Does anyone know if this is supported 'out of the box', or does it require an install. Does anyone have any links, tips, etc to get me started.
MEF is the primary extension mechanism for extending the editor. If you install the SDK, there are a few new project samples set up to create editor extensions, found under C# (or VB)->Extensibility. These include:
Editor classifier – for providing syntax highlighting
Editor margin – putting a margin along the sides of the editor, with arbitrary WPF content
Editor text/viewport adornment – for putting WPF visuals into the editor
You can find overview documentation on MSDN: Extending the editor, and Editor extension points.
Some samples you may want to look at: editor samples on code.msdn.microsoft.com, a couple more on editorsamples.codeplex.com, and the source for all the samples I've written.
I blog about writing editor extensions. On there, you can find descriptions of most of the extensions I've written, along with more general posts about performance, design of the new editor, etc.
Questions posted on the editor forum on msdn also are answered by various members of the editor team.
Related
I'm writing a lot of peoplecode in Oracle's Peoplesoft Application Designer 8.53
as far as IDE's go its pretty rudimentary but i'd like to be able to apply a custom Highlighting Scheme or customize the automatic white space manipulation that happens on save.
i found a few registry keys that allowed some customization but is anyone aware of a more complete list of possible registry modifications to customize the app designer text editor?
e.g. the examples i have found so far include
"PeoplecodeText"="Text,0,16777215,1,1"
"PeoplecodeTextSelection"="Text Selection,0,65280,0,0"
"PeoplecodeNumber"="Number,16512,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeOperator"="Operator,32896,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeComment"="Comment,10789024,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeQuotedString"="QuotedString,255,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeKeyword"="Keyword,16744448,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeClassDefn"="ClassDefn,8421376,16777215,0,1"
"PeoplecodeBuiltin"="Builtin,8388736,16777215,0,1"
I am looking for free extension that has one simple functionality which is sidebar file navigation like is in SuperCharger or Resharper (see attached screenshots). Sadly both of them are paid :-( Does anyone have a good alternative?
Visual studio has Class View window for a quite a while.
You can try Productivity Power Tools, with it, you can:
Expand code files to navigate to its classes, expand classes to navigate to their members, and so on (C# and VB only)
Search your solution, all the way down to class members
Filter your solution or projects to see just opened files, unsaved files, and so on
View related information about classes and members (such as references or callers/callees for C#)
Preview images by hovering over them, or preview rich information by hovering over code items
We've also added support for multiple selection and drag & drop.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioProductTeam.ProductivityPowerTools
I know its an old question, but as i was looking for an alternative to supercharger // Resharper (for the navigation only) few days ago, and had looked on stack before doing my search (and as I found the answers not exactly what i was looking for) ...
After testing a few extensions I finally found a good alternative to those two paid solutions :
https://github.com/sboulema/CodeNav/blob/master/README.md
You can also just download it from the extensions menu , search for CodeNav .
Best.
Just downloaded the VS 2015 RC and have been playing around with Gruntfile.js. I noticed Mads Kristensen demo'ing this, and various JSON files would have a background image displayed in the lower right corner based on the library it was used for (Grunt, Bower, etc...)
It looked like:
Anyone know how to get those background images to display?
It is called Adornments.
From MSDN
Adornments are graphic effects that are not directly related to the
font and color of the characters in the text view. For example, the
red squiggle underline that is used to mark non-compiling code in many
programming languages is an embedded adornment, and tooltips are
pop-up adornments. Adornments are derived from UIElement and implement
ITag. Two specialized types of adornment tag are the
SpaceNegotiatingAdornmentTag, for adornments that occupy the same
space as the text in a view, and the ErrorTag, for the squiggle
underline.
It's not a new feature from VS2015, it already existed in VS2010.
Several extensions allow you to put a custom image as a watermark on the text editor.
If you want to know how it is done under the hood, here is a GitHub repository of an extension.
Here is another MSDN article that explains which classes to implement if you want to create your extension.
We're working on creating a specialized graphical editor for our enterprise applications. We've looked at and rejected DSLs. Ideally I'd like to have the main interface of the editor be docked like the code windows and use WPF for drawing. Can anyone point me to some documentation to get me on the right path?
Thanks.
Colin.
UPDATE: It's beginning to look like "no." From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb166228.aspx: "Document windows are created by implementing an editor. The IVsEditorFactory interface creates document windows as part of instantiating an editor. For more information, see Accessing the Editor By Using Legacy Interfaces."
Following the link to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885127.aspx gives this this bit of advice: "You can access the Visual Studio editor from legacy interfaces. The Visual Studio SDK includes adapters known as shims, which enable these interfaces to interact with the new editor. Nevertheless, we recommend that you update your legacy code to use the new editor API. Your code will perform better and you can use new technologies such as the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)."
So, to sum up: if you want to implement an editor you have to use the legacy interfaces, but you shouldn't use the legacy interfaces because then you can't use WPF or MEF.
Seriously Microsoft, WTF?
UPDATE 2: Now that I have the proper names ("custom editor"), I was able to find the following topic: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsxprerelease/thread/9e605d0f-1296-47c9-a534-e54905251ebe
I still don't see why they couldn't have included that somewhere prominent in the MSDN docs. You know, like somewhere near where they tell you that you can't use WPF if you're using the legacy interfaces.
Creating a custom editor doesn't have to be terribly painful. Yes, a custom editor will require implementing a few interfaces, but you can still use WPF to actually create the control that is hosted in the VS document frame.
DiveDeeper's blog has some great resources for learning about creating a custom editor.
Creating a simple custom editor - the basics
Creating a simple custom editor - the first 10 meters
Creating a simple custom editor - under pressure
I'd recommend using a library like VSXtra to do a lot of the work for you. It will provide you with a nice base implementation of an editor factory, editor pane, package, etc. Istvan Novak writes about building a custom editor with his VSXtra library in this blog post.
Question ONE:
I'm still pretty new to .net, but have used Visual Studio for a few recent projects. I'm now working a new project and I was wondering if visual studio had anything built in that would allow you to browse all of the details about a control, etc..
Is MSDN the best place to go for this?
For instance if I wanted to see of all the methods, properties, etc.. Is there anything inside VS?
Question TWO:
Can anyone recommend, books, resources, that deal specificially with Visual Studio? What each window does, etc.. I have used it enough to complete a few projects, but I haven't seen much in the way of exactly what everything does and why.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Use reflector (it's free!) to get in-depth information about classes etc. Visual studio also has a built-in Object Browser.
P.S. Reflector allows you to reverse engineer assemblies as well, allowing you to view the actual code of a class / method.
P.P.S. Google is still a developer's best friend. Need information on a control, search for it on the web. (Which will lead you to MSDN a lot of the times, but will also get you examples and loads of blog entries).
Question ONE:
You can use the Object Browser (menu View\Object Browser) to see a hierarchical list of all known assemblies, classes, interfaces, enums, etc...
This only gives the signature of each item and not the code.
If you want to see the code, use .Net reflector.
You can also use the Object Browser in Visual Studio. There is usually an icon for it at the top (by the Toolbox, Solution Explorer, etc. icons) or you can navigate to it (View -> Object Browser). When it opens, you will see all of the libraries currently referenced (system and third party) on the left hand side. It's hierarchical, so you can start drilling down. There is a search box at the top, if you want to look for a particular class, method or library. That looks at all the system libraries, not just the ones referenced in your current project.
For more help with the object browser, look here.
Q1:
In Visual Studio:
Above the editor there are 2 dropdown lists:
Left: Shows Classes
Right: Shows Class Members
or Click View > Class View: to see all the classes in the whole solution
I had a similar rub when I started using VS after I had done a lot of Java coding. I was used to the Java API documentation to research properties and such.
I found the VS equivalent IMO, here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229335.aspx
You can browse every class method, property, constructor, etc. right there. Their examples are decent.
In response to question 1, what I usually do is highlight the bit of framework code I'm interested in and hit F1 to bring up the documentation. For example:
Button myButton = new Button();
If you highlight the first Button and hit F1, you'll get an overview on Buttons in Windows Forms. If you highlight Button() and hit F1 you'll get the documentation on the Button class constructor.
In response to question 2, I'm not sure a book is the answer. I think reading a book on all the components of Visual Studio might be overkill. I'd say to keep on hacking away at your projects and page-fault information in via MSDN, Google, and StackOverflow as you need it. As with any IDE and framework, the more you use it the better you'll get at navigating and learning the ins and outs.