DXCore plug-ins overview
These are two primary types of plug-ins you can create:
- Standard Plug-in
The standard plug-in is a workhorse of the extensibility landscape. It serves as a container for DXCore components, such as actions, providers, and your custom event handlers.
- Tool Window
Tool windows are modeless forms that can be docked inside the Visual Studio IDE. The Solution Explorer, Toolbox, and Property Browser are all examples of tool window plug-ins. Creating a tool window plug-in is easy. Just arrange your components in the tool window designer, set a few properties, and compile the project.
You can also add some additional project items into your plug-in project:
- Additional Standard Plug-in or a Tool Window
- Options page
Custom pages participate in the Options Dialog. If your plug-in has any kind of user-configuration, this is a way to go. Option pages offer a number of advantages over a custom roll-your-own approach.
A particular plug-in can be written in CSharp or Visual Basic languages only. Unfortunately, you can’t use the C++ language to write a plug-in, because this language has diverged from the common wizard model in Visual Studio (which other languages use), causing this support to be very non-trivial to add to DXCore.
—– Products: DXCore Versions: all VS IDEs: any Updated: Feb/10/2011 ID: D004