Project Types Architecture

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

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.