Extending Visual Studio

In this chapter, we will learn about the extensibility model of Visual Studio. To do so, we will look at the Visual Studio user interface and its software development kit (SDK) and check out the extensibility points available to us. We will then develop a basic extension for a custom command and see how it can be integrated in a code window, tool menu, and solution explorer. We conclude this chapter by discussing some potent questions around command extensibility. By the end of this chapter, we will understand the fundamentals of Visual Studio Extensibility and have developed a basic extension giving us a solid foundation to create the real-world extensions for our beloved IDE.