Putting the Code in Team [Explorer]... "Extending Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2012" code sample

Visual Studio Gallery - Extending Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2012

Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2012 offers multiple options for extending the user experience. This sample demonstrates several of the extensibility points by adding a new Team Explorer page as well as by placing a new section onto the Pending Changes page.

Introduction

Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2012 offers multiple options for extending the user experience.  This sample demonstrates several of the extensibility points by:

• Adding a new "Recent Changes" Team Explorer page with two sections.
• Adding a new "Selected File Info" section to the built-in Pending Changes page.
• Adding a "Recent Changes" navigation link under the Pending Changes navigation item.

Building the Sample

This sample requires Visual Studio 2012 and the Visual Studio 2012 SDK.  Open the solution and press F5 to run/debug.

Team Explorer Extensibility

• Pages and Sections
• Home Page - Navigation Items and Links
• Plugin Interfaces
• Plugin Discovery
• Plugin Lifetime
• Context Management
• Sharing Info: Data, Selection, Etc
• Navigation
• Notifications
• Useful Classes

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While I'm sure we'll mention this the next time we record RadioTFS I still wanted to give you all a heads about about this sample. I don't see these kinds of samples to often, too many people providing Team Explorer Extensions, so thought highlighting this might help jump start that?

The key thing to remember is that the new Team Explorer in VS 2012 is a new game and meant to be extendible and extended. It's not a hack, but something "official". If you've always wanted to add functionality to Team Explorer, you can and this code sample will help you get started...