Automatically open Source Control Explorer when Visual Studio starts up

Question

We use Visual Studio 2008/2010 and Team Foundation Server here at work. Sometimes I want to just use the Source Control Explorer. Is there a way to have Visual Studio launch and automatically open Source Control Explorer? I'm thinking ideally of having a shortcut on my taskbar or desktop that does this automatically.

And yes, I do know that if the Source Control Explorer window was open the last time I shut down Visual Studio it will open up, but I am wanting to always go straight to Source Control Explorer even if I had closed that window previously.

Answer 1

I use TFS every day at the office. I set up these things so that I can get to our Source repository quickly... (We use VS 2008)

1. In Visual Studio... Open Tools->Options. Select Environement->Startup. In the "At startup" dropdown, select "Show empty environment". If have Source Control Explorer when close Visual Studio, it will be the only open window when you start Visual Studio again.

2. In Visual Studio... Open Tools->Options. Select Environement->Keyboard. Find the command: View.TfsSourceControlExplorer. Set a shortcut for the command. (I like Alt-S)

Enjoy

Answer 2

OK, I figured it out - Source Control Explorer is available in the Visual Studio IDE as a command (View.TfsSourceControlExplorer), and the Visual Studio executable (devenv.exe) provides the /Command argument to execute a command after the IDE starts up. In my case, I have created a desktop shortcut with the following command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /Command View.TfsSourceControlExplorer

NOTE: if you really want this to load fast and don't need any other addins (in my case ReSharper and .NET Reflector Pro) then you can also add the /SafeMode argument to the command line.