How visual studio ide registers a plug-in

Question

I wonder how the VS2008 IDE registers a plugin. A db file, xml etc. since I know that once I call devenv.exe with the parameter to my plugin dll, the next time I launch VS IDE, my plug in is still there. Any leads on where it registers my dll? I can also make use of a best practice for such development pattern. I think of developing a big project and registering modules with reflection as if they were plugins. Thanx in advance

Answer 1

This is not a small topic. Among other things you'll want to know what a Visual Studio Add-in actually is. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/vsx for a starting point.

Also, Visual Studio 2010 is using a new technology for plug-ins: the Managed Extensibility Framework. That's what you should look at.

Answer 2

After creating AddIn project VS creates Addins folder in "Visual Studio 2008"(directory of Your's projects) directory. In this folder VS store all AddIn-s. All file have the .addin extension(probably, I do not remember). If you change the extension for Your's addin file, then VS will not load Your's AddIn.