Creating a Wizard for Plugin project development

Question

My DotNET application allows for plug-in dlls by 3rd party developers. I'd like to facilitate the process of making these plug-ins by offering a set of tools that create empty projects and new standard classes. Essentially, I need to create a typical ClassLibrary project with a bunch of dll references and some PostBuild Events. Also, it would be nice to have a way to set up some basic classes via a Wizard UI.

I know it's possible to create add-ins for Visual Studio, but is this really the preferred mechanism? I could also create a standalone application instead, which would make all the files (*.sln, *.csproj, *.csproj.user, *.cs) on the disk. This way I do not depend on Visual Studio. Is this independence worth the trouble?

Answer 1

The easiest way would probably just be to create a custom project template.

Answer 2

For custom project wizard check following links out:

http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2007/06/06/developing-visual-studio-project-wizards.html

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa289144(VS.71).aspx

I think you don't need a custom project SubType and as klausbyskov said you can use a simple project template to do this task instead. But if you want much control on the project, so you have to create a project SubType. Thus, check this link:

http://mgolchin.blogspot.com/2009/07/project-subtypes.html