How to customize the Visual Studio 2010 RC StartPage recent projects

Question

I'd like to play around with customizing the visual studio 2010 rc start page recent items. For what I have in mind I'd need to customize the datasource / databinding but I can't find where the information is coming from.

<ScrollViewer Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" 
    Style="{DynamicResource StartPage.ScrollViewerStyle}" 
    VerticalAlignment="Stretch"  VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
    <sp:MruListBox 
        DataContext="{Binding Path=RecentProjects}" 
        ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Items}"
        Background="Transparent"
        BorderThickness="0"
        AutomationProperties.AutomationId="MruList"/>
</ScrollViewer>

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I see that it is binding to RecentProjects but where is that coming from?

Answer 1

I could not find any real documentation about this. I guess you knew about VS Docs, but it doesn't even scratch the surface.

Since there is a RecentProjects property used in a binding, there should be a type exposing such a property (or an implementation of ICustomTypeDescriptor, see MSDN Magazine). There is also a binding on the TeamFoundationClientSupported "property".

I found a property called TeamFoundationClientSupported in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.UI.Internal, in a class called Microsoft.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.StartPageDataSource, but it is private, so cannot be used as is in a binding. The constructor of this class contains quite a few lines like this:

base.AddBuiltInProperty(StartPageDataSourceSchema.CustomizationEnabledName, GetUserSetting(StartPageDataSourceSchema.CustomizationEnabledName, false));
    ...
base.AddBuiltInProperty(StartPageDataSourceSchema.TeamFoundationClientSupportedName, this.TeamFoundationClientSupported);
    ...
base.AddBuiltInProperty(StartPageDataSourceSchema.RecentProjectsDataSourceName, source3);
    ...

The last 2 are interesting: they "add a built-in property" called TeamFoundationClientSupported and RecentProjects...

Looking at the implementation at this method shows a simple dictionary with a key based on the property name (the first parameter) and the value being the second parameter. This dictionary is used by a method called EnumProperties in Microsoft.Internal.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.UIDataSource. Going through the chain of uses, we arrive at a class called Microsoft.Internal.VisualStudio.PlatformUI.DataSource (in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.10.0), which implements ICustomTypeDescriptor. Thus, it explains how the properties are found by the binding system. I have not found how the DataSource type descriptor is linked to the StartPageDataSource class, but at least we can know the list of supported properties in the StartPageDataSource constructor.