Menu
The difference between Add-In and Integration Package is still unclear and now with Visual Studio 2010 an extension manager appears along with the add-in manager.
285
What are extensions? Extensions are add-ons that allow you to customize and enhance your experience in Visual Studio by adding new features or integrating existing tools. An extension can range in all levels of complexity, but its main purpose is to increase your productivity and cater to your workflow.
Out of 35 extensions described as being "for Visual Studio 2022" in the Visual Studio Marketplace, 31 are free, three come with free trials, and only one is "paid" only. As its name bespeaks, this is a linting tool, coming from SonarSource. It leads the "free" pack with 11,679 installs as of this writing.
You can install extensions from Visual Studio Marketplace or the Manage Extensions dialog box in Visual Studio. To install extensions from within Visual Studio: From Extensions > Manage Extensions, find the extension you want to install.
Add-ins implement an extensibility interface that was first created for Visual Studio.Net for customizing and automating the IDE. These add-ins are supported in Visual Studio 2002/2003/2005/2008/2010.
Extensions are MEF components and do not normally implement the Add-in interface. Visual Studio 2010 is the first version of Visual Studio to support MEF components.
Only Add-ins appear in the Add-in Manager. Only Extensions appear in the Extension Manager.
I don't know if an MEF extension could also be loaded by Visual Studio as an add-in, but there's really not much reason that to happen. An extension can use the add-in DTE interfaces without actually being loaded as an add-in.
177
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
