Testing visual studio extensions

Question

Is there an alternate way to test VS 2010 extension projects? Right now I have to spin a new instance of VS 2010 and wait. This takes couple of minutes and would love to know if there's another way of doing it quickly.

Answer 1

Depending on the project type you used to create your package (empty VSIX container or one of the extension projects from the SDK like Editor Margin, Text Adornment, ViewPort Adornment, etc) It will ask you if you want to create unit/integration tests.

The integration tests provide all the methods simulate the shell and allow you to test without actually spinning up the UI. Of course this depends if you need to do any visual verification, but if you're testing package load, service calls, pretty much anything else it's great.

Let me know how it goes.