KludgeHack

15 Visual Studio .NET Add-Ins you won’t live without

If you are a .NET programmer, or even just a programmer, you must know the need for great tools in the process of developing, documenting, distributing, etc…

From the console compiler to the powerful Visual Studio IDE, .NET is just about coding as much as the tools.

For that matter, here’s my list of 15 indispensable VS.NET add-ins:

• Lutz Roeder’s Reflector – Class Browser, explorer, analyser and documentation viewer. It allows you to easily view, navigate, decompile and analyse .NET assemblies in C#, VB and IL.  It supports its own add-ins. Currently, there are dozens of powerful add-ins.
• CodeRush with Refactor! Pro – A fantastic combination. Two add-ins from Developer Express that integrates with VS.NET IDE and provides a unique set of features. CodeRush brings new ways to look at the code, generate code, navigate through code, and create custom extensions to the development environment. Refactor! Pro adds a easy but powerful way to refactor your code with more than 90 refactorings for C#, VB or C++. Both this tools share the same engine (DXCore), and you can find plugins online for this engine.
• ReSharper – This add-in is by itself a package of great features. It brings intelligent coding assistance, on-the-fly error highlighting, quick error correcting, support for code refactoring, unit testing, and others. This add-in is only for C# supports both VB.NET and C#, and should not be used with CodeRush simultaneous, as they provide similar features.
• CodeSmith – A template-based code generator that allows you to generate code customized with properties. Its main features are: reduces repetitive code, generate code in less time with fewer bugs, produce consistent code that addresses your standards, etc.
• GhostDoc – Free add-in that generates XML documentation comments from C# code, either from already created comments, or generating new comments based on the name and type of methods.
• DPack – Free collection of VS .NET 2003 and 2005 tools. Brings tools designed for greatly increase developer’s productivity, automate repetitive processes and expand upon some of VS features.
• devMetrics – Free tool for C# that measures various attributes of your code so that you can accurately assess your product for quality and maintainability. Easily identifies opportunities for refactoring, and creates custom reports based on any characteristic of your code. 
• CodeKeep – Great free Add-in for VS .NET 2003 or 2005 that easily allows the developer to manage code snippets and search other code snippets from the repository online without ever leaving Visual Studio.
• SOAPscope – More than a add-in, its a complete XML Web services design studio. Keeps a database of all Web Services traffic, analyses data for WS-I compliance and allows for record and replay of messages.
• TestDriven.NET – This is Unit Testing for VS.NET. No other can make unit testing more easy. With a single click, you can run unit tests anywhere in Visual Studio Solutions.
• pinvoke.net – Gives you a new context menu for inserting PInvoke Signatures anywhere in your code, by communicating with the Interop Wiki (pinvoke.net). Defining PInvoke signatures (also known as Declare statements in VB) without any help is an error-prone process that can introduce extremely subtle bugs.
• SmartAssembly – Provides a unique solution to optimize .NET assembly’s, protect your work, minimize distribution size, increase performance and add powerful post-deployment debugging capabilities.
• AnkhSVN – This open-source free add-in adds Subversion version control to your Visual Studio .NET. Allows you to perform the most common version control operations directly from inside the VS.NET IDE. SVN is not yet fully supported, but can already be used for daily workflow.
• VSCmdShell – Brings a .NET console window to Visual Studio IDE.
• dotTrace – The complete profiling solution for VS .NET. Profiles performance of .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 applications, memory usage of .NET Framework 2.0 applications, ASP.NET applications, and Windows services.

The list follows no specific order.

Some of these are free, others not. Those that aren’t free, are very likely worth the cost.

In the coming week, I will also post details about some of this add-ins, and update this with the proper links.

If you know any add-ins that deserves a place in this list please make it known.