Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) expands the capabilities of Visual Studio by allowing architects and developers to run guidance packages, such as those included in Software Factories, which automate key development tasks from within the Visual Studio environment.

The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is an extension to Visual Studio that allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components and patterns. The resulting Guidance Packages are composed of templates, wizards and recipes, which help developers build solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance.

	Introduction to the Guidance Automation Toolkit This article provides an overview of Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) goals and benefits. It also introduces the important concepts and components found within the GAT, such as recipes, templates and wizards.
	Download the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit February 2008 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) enable you to run Guidance Packages, such as the Guidance Automation Toolkit or those included in Software Factories. You can use the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) to author or customize Guidance Packages.

Guidance Automation Toolkit Welcome to the Guidance Automation Toolkit workbench! Look below for the most recent posts about the Guidance Automation Toolkit.   Grigori Melnik Acceptance Test Engineering Guide, volume 1 BETA2 release Today I am pleased to announce the release of the beta2 of the first volume of our Acceptance Test Engineering Guide. We are getting closer to “done”. As it became apparent that the primary reader personas for each part in the original guide (that... plus Enterprise Library 5.0: Architectural refactoring complete The highest priority story in the EntLib5 backlog is ARC01: Architectural refactoring, which includes the use of a dependency injection container for wiring your EntLib objects instead of the one-off ObjectBuilder factories and DI container independe... plus Video on what’s coming in EntLib 5.0 In this channel9 video, Chris and I give a 10,000 ft view on what’s coming in EntLib5.0. For details, consult our product backlog.... plus Tom Hollander  Gosh! GAT/GAX is Golden! Hot off the presses: the February 2008 release of the Guidance Automation Toolkit and Guidance Automation Extensions is now available. In addition to a number of new features, it's great to see that GAT/GAX has finally been allowed to graduate from C... plus GAX += 0.1; Grigori has just announced the release of the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit, July 2007 CTP (or simply "1.3" to their mates). While I would have personally liked to see a more substantial list of changes, this looks li... plus GAX 1.3 for Orcas announced Grigori Melnik, who has taken over responsibility of GAX and Enterprise Library since my departure from patterns & practices, has spilled the beans on the initial plans for the next version of GAX, which is being called 1.3 internally (... plus Wojtek Kozaczynski New Version of GAX It has been a while since I posted a message, but this occasion is hard to pass; we will be releasing a new version of GAX.   Since the last release in December we have been using GAX and GAT extensively on a number of projects including the Sm... plus Recipes Are Not Wizards I was helping another friend design a guidance package, and I realized that he was thinking about recipes as wizards. This is not such a good idea, and may lead to misusing GAT.   Recipes are simple animals; they get information from the user... plus Nothing Shows Up Without a Reference I was helping Eugenio write his first guidance package. He asked me to show him a few things "so he did not have to read the documentation" J. He created a project template by copying one of the existing ones, rebuilt the guidance package solution (w... plus Victor Garcia Aprea  New Blog About Code Generation With T4 in Visual Studio! While developing the Visual T4 Code Generator edition my team and I are constantly having discussions on how the best code generation tool in earth should look like and also about more “abstract” code generation chores not necessarily related to the... plus Wishing for dev10: Get rid of PLK, SLK, DLK and anything ?LK Today one very annoying thing you've to do when you want to deploy your Visual Studio Package extension is to get a PLK or "Package Load Key" from Microsoft. This is a painful process which can be divided into two equally painful parts: Pain #1: Get... plus T4 Editor v1.0 RTM finally available! After lots and lots of hard work I'm very proud to announce that my team shipped v1.0 of the Clarius T4 Editor today. We've been insanely struggling to get the bits finished during the last few months; you know, extending Visual Studio for simple s... plus Oscar Calvo  Intro Hello, after working with DevDiv and p&p as vendor for the past 7 years (wow, I can't believe it's so long) I finally joined Microsoft as a full time employee. I joined the VS Team Architect team as an SDE 2 months ago. I joined the tea... plus The Evil EnvDTE namespace Link Daniel Cazzulino

Learn Articles Introduction to the Guidance Automation Toolkit Downloads Guidance Automation Toolkit and Guidance Automation Extensions February 2008 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 Participate Forums Guidance Automation Toolkit Forum Post your questions, comments and suggestions in this forum for the Guidance Automation Toolkit. Chats and Webcasts Packaging Design and Architecture Guidance for Visual Studio This webcast shows how design and architecture guidance is packaged for direct availability in Microsoft Visual Studio. The key idea is an integration of Visual Studio templates and recipes into units of guidance called Guidance Packages. Report Bugs and Suggestions Product Feedback Visit the New MSDN Product Feedback Center, the place to find known issues and workarounds, submit bugs, make suggestions, and get the latest info directly from Microsoft's product teams. Other Resources Related Sites patterns & practices Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Architects Visual Studio Extensibility Center

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