Building your first extension

Let’s create a simple Visual Studio extension that adds a new menu item under the Tools menu. When clicked, this menu item will display a message box. This example will guide us through setting up a basic extension project.

Before diving into extension development, it’s crucial to set up your environment properly. The first step is to ensure that we have the right tools installed. Begin by opening the Visual Studio Installer and modifying the current Visual Studio installation. Within the installer, we’ll want to check that the Visual Studio extension development workload is installed.

Figure 14.1 – The Visual Studio extension development workload

This workload includes the Visual Studio SDK and other essential tools required for building extensions. Having these components in place is the foundation for a smooth development process, ensuring that you have access to all the libraries, templates...