Not exactly. Ever tried to write a Visual Studio.NET 200x addin? If yes, then you know that it isn’t exactly easy. Fortunately, there is a cure to this shortcoming and it is a product called DXCore provided by Developer Express. Basically this is an addin that eases writing new (completely managed) addins or better, DXCore plugins. BTW, both CodeRush for Visual Studio.NET and Refactor! (PRO) are based on this core. If you have experience with writing Visual Studio.NET addins or not you will be surprised how easy is to create a custom plugin. Not only that creating plugins is easy, DXCore also provides great deal of functionality that you can use. What’s even better is that DXCore is free! There is also a CodeRush community (community plugins based on DXCore) that offers various useful plugins (mostly for free). Among them are three plugins I wrote:
- SpellChecker (spell checks strings inside the editor)
- CopyProject (copies or compresses files relevant to the project and/or solution) – useful if you have to send the solution/project to somebody
- Enterprise Library Configuration Tool Launcher (adds context menu that launches Enterprise Library Configuration Tool on the current project)
To tell you the truth I would never write those plugins without DXCore – to much complicated otherwise.
Very nice blog.