Extensibility Tools for Visual Studio

An extension built for and by Visual Studio extension writers.

Download this extension from the VS Gallery or get the nightly build.

VSCT files

The Visual Studio Command Table leaves a lot to be desired in terms of both Intellisense and discoverability of even the most common use cases.

This extension improves on that.

Intellisense for custom GUIDs

Get Intellisense for symbols and groups through out the .vsct file whether you're defining Groups, Menus, Buttons, KeyBindings or CommandPlacements.

Intellisense for custom IDs

Provides Intellisense for IDs based on the guid attribute on the same XML element.

Intellisense built-in groups and menus

All the built-in groups and menus are located under the guidSHLMainMenu GUID and Intellisense is now provided for all the corresponding IDs.

Snippets

All main XML elements in the VSCT file has snippets associated with them and can be invoked by hitting the Tab key.

Auto-sync VSCT commands

Auto-generate the GuidList and PackageCommand classes every time you save the VSCT file. This keeps your code in sync with the VSCT file at all times.

Feature contributed by phofman

Editor margin

The margin is located below the bottom scrollbar and comes in handy when writing extensions that extends the VS editor.

Document encoding

Shows the encoding of the current document and more details on hover.

Content type

Shows the content type of the textbuffer at the caret position. The over tooltip shows the name of the base content type.

Classification

Displays the name of the classification at the caret position in the document. The hover tooltip shows the inheritance hierarchy of the EditorFormatDefinition's BaseDefinition attribute.

Pkgdef files

Syntax highlighting

Colorizes registry keys, strings, keywords, comments and more.

Intellisense

Intellisense is provided for tokens and GUIDs.

Snippets

By typing a question mark on an empty line, a list of snippets appear. Hit Tab on the snippet you want and it will be inserted.

Brace matching

Matches parantheses and square brackets.

Validation

Validates various common mistakes like unknown tokens and unclosed strings and braces.

Formatting

Format the entire document or just the selected lines.