A Deep Look at Building Custom Tools on the Microsoft Visual Studio Shell Quan To Program Manager, VS Ecosystem Microsoft Corporation

Objectives What is the Visual Studio Shell? What can I do with it? Where do I get started?

Agenda Deployment & Licensing Storyboard Designer Demo Introduce Visual Studio 2008 Shell Q & A

Visual Studio 2008 End User Product Editions First-time Programmers Students Hobbyists Web Developers Part-Timers VB6 Developers Solo Professionals Consultants Small Teams Project Managers Architects Testers Enterprise Developers

Introducing: Visual Studio 2008 Shell Empty “Shell” with IDE features. No Visual Studio as a pre-requisite. Visual Studio Shell (integrated Mode) Optimized for Programming Languages Visual Studio Shell (isolated Mode) Optimized for Specialized Tools

Integrated vs. Isolated Modes Team System Professional Standard VS Shell (integrated) VS Shell (isolated) VS Shell (isolated) Runtime

How Does it Work? VS Binaries AppEnvStub.dll int __cdecl Start(LPSTR lpCmdLine, LPWSTR pszAppName, int nCmdShow); int __cdecl Setup(LPSTR lpCmdLine, _In_opt_ LPWSTR pszAppName); int __cdecl Remove(LPSTR lpCmdLine, _In_opt_ LPWSTR pszAppName);

How To Build Your Own VS Shell based Application? Stub exe Branding Customization s Create your own Shell Packages Templates Docs Add your extensions Obtain SLK Chain in Shell Runtime Create Setup Program 1 2 3

Storyboard Designer A Specialized Tool Built on Visual Studio 2008 Shell (isolated mode)

What Just Happened? What?How? Created Stub EXECame with default project. Applied Custom BrandingReplace icons and splash screen. Added your own Help About box. Customized Menus and Commands Uncomment tags in.vsct file. Customized Package RegistrationChanged.pkgundef file. Customized Tool Window Registration Changed.pkgundef file. Added Our Own VS PackagesAdded projects into solution and changed Shell Dependencies. Added Our Own TemplateAdded template into shared template location and ran /setup. Created setup for your shell product Used Setup project

Your Setup Development vs. Deployment Visual Studio Development VS SDK + VS Shell Runtime Redist Deployment Your App.exe + Your Stuff +

Licensing Freely redistributable No platform targeting restriction Main restrictions for Isolated Mode: Add your own Help About Can’t remove splash screen overlay Can’t load MS packages Can’t break VS or others Pass through VS Shell EULA VS Shell Redist Pack Redist EULA VS Shell EULA VS Shell Runtime Redist

Summary What is the Visual Studio Shell? A new edition of Visual Studio targeted at tools developers. The Shell edition is offered in isolated and integrated modes. What can I do with it? Integrated Mode: create programming language environments that merges with Visual Studio if installed together. Isolated Mode: create standalone custom-branded vertical or horizontal tools environments that run side-by-side with Visual Studio. Where do I get started? Download VS 2008 SDK today! Attend the VSX Conference Sept 15 & 16 Visit VSX Developer Center at

Questions?

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