Carlos Quintero (Microsoft MVP) blog

MZ-Tools Articles Series: BUG: Empty interfaces in VSLangProj90.dll

carlosq — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:19:00 GMT

Traditionally the VSLangProjXX.dll files contain interfaces such as VBProjectPropertiesX, CSharpProjectConfigurationPropertiesY and VSLangProj90.dll contains them but it seems that it was forgotten to add properties to them: BUG: Empty interfaces in VSLangProj90...(read more)

The strange case of Package 'Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package' has failed to load properly

carlosq — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:05:00 GMT

I was getting the error "Package 'Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package' has failed to load properly" when working with add-ins in VS 2008 since a couple of days ago, along with "COM object that has been separated from its...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: INFO: List of known project type Guids

carlosq — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:06:00 GMT

I have been struggling during the last day to get a list of actual project type Guids (EnvDTE.Project.Kind property), since not all the Guids that appear in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\Projects registry key are...(read more)

The strange case of InvalidCastException using EditPoint.FindPattern with Visual Studio Database Projects

carlosq — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:14:00 GMT

Many months ago I reported to Microsoft through Microsoft Connect an InvalidCastException that happened when using the EditPoint.FindPattern with .sql files of a database project of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite (or VS 2008 Edition for DB Professionals...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series (Updated): PRB: Visual Studio .NET events being disconnected from add-in.

carlosq — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:41:00 GMT

As you may know if you are a C# add-in programmer, DTE events can get disconnected if you don't hold a class variable pointing to them (VB.NET add-in programmers tend to use the WithEvents approach which already uses a class variable so they don't...(read more)

Empty ProjectProperties4 and ProjectConfigurationProperties4 interfaces in VSLangProj90.dll ?

carlosq — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:51:00 GMT

As you may know, while the general Visual Studio automation model uses the EnvDTE DLL series (EnvDTE.dll, EnvDTE80.dll, EnvDTE90.dll), there are some extension DLLs for the automation model of VB.NET and C#, the VSLangProj DLL series (VSLangProj.dll,...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Get the target .NET Framework of a Visual Studio 2008 project from a Visual Studio add-in or macro

carlosq — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:54:00 GMT

Today I had to get the target .NET Framework of a VS 2008 project. While the project file stores the values as "v2.0", "v3.0", etc, the values returned by the automation model are a bit surprising at first glance. Here is the article...(read more)

Visual Studio CommandBars don't have unique names

carlosq — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:21:00 GMT

Just in case you are not aware of this yet (I found a problem related to this today in the MSDN forum), Visual Studio CommandBars don't have unique names, which means that retrieving a specific commandbar such as "Project" with this code...(read more)

The strange case of System.UnauthorizedAccessException when registering a Visual Studio add-in for COM Interop

carlosq — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:03:00 GMT

Today I received a bug report for a new customer of my MZ-Tools add-in for Visual Studio (who purchased directly the product without trying the trial version) and the first thing that he encountered when running the setup was: System.UnauthorizedAccessException...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Add a filtered task with navigation to the Task List from a Visual Studio add-in

carlosq — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:14:00 GMT

Another "task" that can be quite usual from a Visual Studio add-in is to add a task to the Task List or Error List. It happens in Visual Studio 2005/2008 that it is not as easy as it seems because of the following: - VS 2005/2008 uses a separate...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Execute a command by Guid and Id from a Visual Studio add-in

carlosq — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:08:00 GMT

While most Visual Studio commands have a name and you can execute them using DTE.ExecuteCommand, there are cases where commands don't have a name, just the Guid and Id that truly identifies them, For example, the command to filter the Task List of...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Open the Web Browser and navigate to a page from a Visual Studio add-in or macro

carlosq — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:54:00 GMT

A quite simple question (once you know the answer) is how to open the Web Browser of Visual Studio and navigate to some web site or page. I thought that the automation model didn't provide such capability and was about to use a workaround, but it...(read more)

Introducing the Automation Model (EnvDTE) Enhancement Request series

carlosq — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:24:00 GMT

Apart from very simple approaches (macros, templates) and super-specialized DSL tools for very specific purposes, there are really only two general Visual Studio extensibility approaches: the Automation Model (formerly Extensibility model), a.k.a. EnvDTE...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Design a Visual Studio add-in to install and run on Windows Vista

carlosq — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:23:00 GMT

When I searched just "MZ-Tools" on Google some time ago I noticed one of the first results in the second page: Making MZTools for VBA work on Vista and it was amazing to me that some user went as far as finding a way to make an old version of...(read more)

MZ-Tools Articles Series: HOWTO: Create a setup for a Visual Studio 2005 / 2008 add-in using Inno Setup

carlosq — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:09:00 GMT

This is another of those articles long overdue that I kept in a list and that I wanted to write. Back in 2004 I finished the first commercial version of my MZ-Tools add-in for .NET and despite my hate for setups (I much prefer XCOPY deployment to be confident...(read more)

The special and in another time unique "Solution Items" folder of Visual Studio 2005

carlosq — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:46:00 GMT

Back in VS.NET 2002/2003 a solution could contain only up to two folders, which were special: the Solution Items folder and the Miscellaneous Files folder (if you configured a setting in the Options window to show it), and the automation model (EnvDTE...(read more)

MZ-Tools articles series: HOWTO: Removing commands and UI elements during Visual Studio .NET add-in uninstallation (updated)

carlosq — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:44:00 GMT

I have updated a quite old but useful article (Feb 2005) to document the new /ResetAddin command-line flag of Visual Studio 2005/2008 and how to do it correctly: HOWTO: Removing commands and UI elements during Visual Studio .NET add-in uninstallation...(read more)

devenv.exe /SafeMode and add-ins in Visual Studio 2005 / 2008

carlosq — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 08:38:00 GMT

Just a curious difference in behavior between Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 that the MSDN documentation doesn't cover very well: According to the MSDN documentation of VS 2005 , "This switch prevents all third-party VSPackages from...(read more)

A simple RichTextBox-based source code colorizer (Part 2)

carlosq — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:35:00 GMT

Some days ago I posted a simple RichTextBox-based source code colorizer , but after testing with big code snippets it happened that it didn't perform very well (it took several seconds), so I rewrote it from scratch. This time I use a low level approach...(read more)

Unknown error (error number 80131522) loading add-ins

carlosq — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:32:00 GMT

I am writing an article about creating setups for Visual Studio add-ins and testing I have found that if the namespace/class specified in the <FullClassName> tag of the .AddIn XML file does not match the actual namespace and connect class name in...(read more)