How do I attach my Visual Stuido Add-in window to a tab programmatically?

Question

I'm creating a small addin in the hopes of making it fun and easy to play with graphics in Visual Studio. There has been one small annoyance though, I can't seem to figure out how to attach my newly created window to the tab bar.

It's all F#, but the solution should be just a couple of function calls so please feel free to use C# or VB in your answer.

type WindowManager(applicationObject: DTE2, addInInstance: AddIn) = 
    member this.CreateWindow(control: Type, caption) = 
        let windowInterface = applicationObject.Windows :?> Windows2
        let tempObj = ref null
        let assemblyLocation = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location
        let className = control.FullName
        let instanceGuid = System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString("B")
        let toolWindow = windowInterface.CreateToolWindow2( addInInstance, assemblyLocation, className, caption, instanceGuid, tempObj)
        toolWindow.Visible <- true

I think I just need to link it to something in the applicationObject. The only problem is what.

Answer 1

My understanding is that the only way to control tool window position is to provide it via a VSPackage, not via AddIn (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb166406.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb165452.aspx for more information).

I believe that the reason for this limitation is that positions of particular tool windows are user-controllable; even if you provide the tool window via VSPackage and specify its position via the registry magic as described in the above links, you still only control the location of a first appearance of a tool window. After that, the location will always come from wherever the user moved your toolwindow, and this is very deliberately non-overridable.

I might be missing some new VS2010 mechanisms though.

Answer 2

I seem to have figured it out:

toolWindow.Linkable <- false
toolWindow.WindowState <- vsWindowState.vsWindowStateMaximize
toolWindow.Visible <- true