Visual Studio Integration Concepts

  • Article

The topics in this section describe the overall structure of Visual Studio and the integrated development environment (IDE). Other topics explain VSPackages and services, and how to create and use them.

In This Section

  • Visual Studio Development Environment Model
    Discusses the extensibility architecture, whose command-handling and routing scheme gives users an open framework to make easy access to both existing and installed command sets possible.

  • Implementation Strategies
    Describes the extension of Visual Studio by using add-ins, macros, VSPackages, or a combination.

  • Experimental Build
    Explains the experimental build of Visual Studio. When you develop an application that might change Visual Studio, the Visual Studio SDK provides the experimental build for you to use instead of the released build.

  • Visual Studio Shell
    Describes the Visual Studio IDE, which is the primary agent of integration in Visual Studio.

  • Visual Studio SDK and Automation
    Discusses using automation, VSPackages, or a combination to create Visual Studio extensibility applications.

  • Visual Studio SDK and Managed Code
    Compares the different ways to write a VSPackage in managed code.