Professional Visual Studio® 2008

51.2. The Automation Model and Visual Studio Extensibility

The automation model is strongly correlated with Visual Studio Extensibility and the options it provides. These options apply the automation model in order to work.

Of the various extensibility options provided by Visual Studio, three are more common, relevant, and use the automation model more than others. These three extensibility options have different goals and applications and are designed specifically for a particular level of extensibility.

Add-ins, macros, and VSPackages are the three extensibility options that apply the automation model in order to provide different tools for the developer to automate tasks in Visual Studio and extend this environment.

You can group these three options in some ways from the ease-of-development point of view and the depth of integration they provide for you. Figure 51-2 shows this in a schematic view.

Figure 51.2. Figure 51-2

As you can see, VSPackages are at the top, add-ins are in the middle, and macros are in the lowest level. From the top down your development process is easier; going up the pyramid, the level and depth of integration with Visual Studio increases.

It's crucial to mention here an important point about VSPackages. VSPackages have been with Visual Studio for a long while and are known as the deepest way to extend it. With VSPackages you have access to the same ...