I would like to make a support plug-ins in my program.
For example in my program there are several tabs in one tab is the editor in which the code is written also in that tab has a button run.
After pressing the button run occurs a compilation of source code and its execution.
The results of work are displayed in the other tab.
I would like to find such a component in which there are:
Syntax Highlighting, Debugger, Analogue of solution explorer
Thank you very much for your answers.
I would like to bring more of clarity to my question.
I want to do something similar to that is shown in the screenshots below
On a single tab there is the editor and at the other tab displays the results.
To write plug-ins I'd like to use C #.
I guess the best place to start is AvalonDock from CodePlex, specifically what you are trying to do is a Tabbed User Interface.
Keep in mind that even with a TabbedWindows framework build/debug and syntax highlighting are not for free and you will have to find icons and design the UI mostly yourself.
for code coloring there are also many components, also free, like Scintilla .NET
You obviously understand that Visual Studio is a very complex application, so rewriting portions of it will be difficult. There are components available to help you, like the ICSharpCode text editor. In fact, that whole project is probably quite valuable.
However, when thinking of plugins and actually writing code for it, I'd personally go down the MEF route. In fact, this is the very framework that VS.NET 2010 uses for extensibility. Provide your user/developer with a set of libraries to code against (like an SDK), and let them use a Visual Studio Express edition to write proper code :)
As source code editor you can use AvalonEdit (it is great, in some aspects even better than VS code editor), solution explorer is fairly easy to create and debugger is way too language-specific to be a reusable component (you didn't specify what language are you developing for!).
The whole thing can be packaged into AvalonDock, so you get the draggable and dockable panels - it even has VS 2010-like skin (and again - is very easy to implement even with only very basic WPF knowledge).
Or you can use the Visual Studio Isolated Shell - it allows you to use the Visual Studio interface in your program (the end users don't have to have VS installed!), but it requires extensive knowledge of VS API (if you ever developed VS extension you know what I am talking about). For example Civilization V used this approach for it's modding environment, but the result smells as stripped VS with custom splash screen, not as professional product. There are many buttons and config. options that don't work, some features that would be expected from such program (and easy to do in custom app) didn't get in because it would be nigh impossible to implant them into the VSIS etc...
EDIT: You may also eventually be interested in this.
Related
For WPF/C# where are all the default code snippets for things like Dependency Properties (wpfdp) or Routed Commands (wpfrc). I couldn't find these snippets listed anywhere in Visual Studio.
For a dependency property, use propdp.
You can find out all available snippets easily if you're using visual studio 2017:
Type a letter, for example a.
Click on the last icon at the bottom of the Intellisense Window.
This displays all available snippets.
Personally, I think it's wise to learn c# if you're trying to learn wpf. WPF has a notoriously tricky learning curve and you will want all the help you can get in the process. C# developers are much more active blogging and posting samples than VB. It's way easier to find C# help. Certainly in my area of the world it's also way easier to find work using c# than vb.
There's a snippet manager.
Press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B and you get a window up.
They are organised by language.
You can write your own fairly easily, although the support in standard vs is pretty limited.
Some people particularly like resharper for it's macro snippet support.
Roslyn supports refactoring and some prefer that route for complicated snippet-like functionality.
But anyhow, take a look in there.
Under c# do you not see the snippets?
If not this could be an install issue.
Maybe you installed just for VB initially if you're moving to c#.
And as Xanimax said. Set routed command aside for now. Learn MVVM and pick one of the nuget packages intended to give you a more convenient way to define commands. I like mvvmlight.
The keyboard commands are propdp and propa. If you need to find them otherwise type in CTRL - X and the Insert Snippet dialog will pop up and you will be given the list of keyboard snippets to insert via folders:
The two you are interested in are in the NetFX30 folder and not the Visual C# folder:
At a broader level, I'm converting a MFC application (MFC 6.0) into Windows Forms application (Visual Studio 2013). I read certain blogs that describes that this conversion is possible. By this conversion I can re-use code written in MFC, only I will need to create UI. However I will need to understand the previous code and may need to re-write it a bit.
I got the motivation from here and here.
I have performed following steps so far.
Opened Visual C++ 6.0 project in Visual Studio 2013.
Build it successfully.
Then added CLR support to it, and fixed errors.
Added a Windows form, and added controls to it. As mentioned here.
Added functionality and build it successfully.
Now when I run this application, then it still point to old MFC window.
I'm missing certain settings which will change the rendering window from MFC to WindowsForm. What am I missing here?
Addition to that, I see problem with this approach as described by #Roger in comments, and I understand that. So, I wanted to know for any tool/utility which may convert legacy code into C#. Does such utility available?
TIA.
The code you are referring to seems suitable for amending a MFC application with a few forms as child windows to make use of .NET features. However, the main window is another story. You wrote the application is huge, so I suppose you don't want a simple form as your main window and rather have some kind of MDI interface in mind. If you replace the CMainFrame in the legacy MFC application, it just doesn't make sense to maintain an old CWinApp class. Anyway, if you are hell-bent on going down that path, you may want to have a look at an old CodeProject articel (.NET1.x, .NET2.x) to get a better grasp at the whole concept.
But as Roger already suggested, it would be a wise choice to find a nice GUI framework, perhaps even WPF instead of WindowsForms, and do a GUI rewrite -- especially if one part of the motivation for the conversion is to move to newer UI concepts. If your C++ program logic is well separated in your MFC project, put it in a COM server and make use of interoperability.
How does Visual Studio and other similar programs display a form in their IDE?
Is it possible to achieve the same or a similar effect using C# or VB.NET?
Please see the picture below to get what I mean.
If you are talking about hosting a Winforms editor in your code, it is entirely possible and is actually built in to the .NET framework!
The Essence is the IDesignerHost interface. The whole system is complicated, but can be done (I have done it in production code for runtime layout configuration editing). There is a sample of code from Microsoft here.
I'm sure if you search fir 'IDesignerHost' you'll find enough reference material to figure it out.
Are you speaking about UI creating tools?
Refer to http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/ - SharpDevelop for deep dive. It's open sourse, so you'll be able to find out more details.
I believe what you want is a multiple document interface (MDI) see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973874.aspx for more info.
How do I create a custom Visual Studio 2008 UI designer for a C# file?
For example, when you double click on a DataSet in the Solution Explorer, a UI screen appears that allows you to edit the DataSet, even though it is defined in XML/code (which you can right click and "View Code").
Usually this code is separated from user code in some way, either by region ("Windows Forms Designer Generated Code"), by codegen (".g.cs" for WPF XAML files), or some other means like partial classes.
For some hints on Visual Studio Extensibility, see "Visual Studio 2010 addin writing articles/tutorials?". The Visual Studio SDK may have the information you need.
Well, you'd have to buy into the Visual Studio extension model. There are things you can do with the EnvDTE class. They are however fairly limited, not good enough to do what you want to do.
The next stop is the unmanaged extensibility model, based on COM. That requires writing unmanaged COM code, based on IVxxxx interfaces. Available to 3rd party addon developers like the company that makes Resharper. You have to get a license to write that kind of code, Microsoft won't be convinced you won't crash their product until you show some kind of proof you know what you are doing. You'll have to call, I think it is called the VSIP licence. That's possible, obviously it has been done.
Ask your company's legal counsel to take care of those hurdles.
This is a general question, but I'll explain my specific need at the moment:
I want to find the framework class that enables one to choose an image at design-time. I can find the editor that is used at run-time - its the Drawing.Design.ImageEditor. At design time, however, a different editor pops up which allows one to choose an image from resources.
I'm guessing I could run some kind of program, then open up the image editor, from the property grid, and see what new windows/classes have been created?
Thanks
Yes, you can see what's being used by using another instance of Visual Studio and use Tools + Attach to Process (managed) to look at the call stack. It is a Microsoft.VisualStudio.Windows.Forms.ResourcePickerDialog. That is not something you can use in your own code, the Visual Studio designer assemblies are not re-distributable. Nor would they be useful, they monkey with the design-time state of the project.
Making you own isn't that hard, just use Reflection to iterate the properties of Properties.Resources and find the ones that have the Bitmap or Icon type. Display them in a ListView to allow the user to pick one. Adding resources at runtime isn't an option.
A tool with similar functionality to what you mention is Spy++ which you can find in your Visual Studio folder on the start menu (under the sub menu Visual Studio Tools).
However, if I understand you correctly, I don't think the design time editor you're talking about is written in managed code and even if it was, I'm fairly sure it's not in the framework. It's just part of Visual Studio itself and as far as I know you can't get hold of the source code for that.