Project Types Architecture

This section contains detailed information about the architecture of project types in Visual Studio.

In This Section

  • Elements of a Project Model
    Lists the services a project type can consume and the interfaces it must implement.

  • Project Model Core Components
    Describes the interfaces project types both must implement and optionally can implement to provide additional functionality.

  • When to Create Project Types
    Helps you decide when you must create a project type and when you can use another Visual Studio extensibility feature such as VSPackages and editors to achieve the same goal.

  • Hierarchies and Selection
    Describes how Visual Studio uses hierarchies and selection context to provide a consistent and simplified user experience.

  • Project Subtypes
    Explains how project subtypes let you customize the behavior of the project systems of Visual Basic and Visual C++.

  • Project Types
    Provides an overview of projects as the basic building blocks of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Links are provided to additional topics that explain how projects control building and compiling code.