Introducing Workspace Reloader - A Visual Studio AddIn to save your open files across project reloads - Init

<body> <h1>Introducing Workspace Reloader - A Visual Studio AddIn to save your open files across project reloads</h1> <div><p><img style="display: inline; float: right" title="Works on my machine" alt="Works on my machine" align="right" src="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/HowtochangethelocationofyouriPhonebackup_12C83/worksonmymachine_3.png" />A while back my buddy <a href="http://samsaffron.com/">Sam Saffron</a> (from <a href="http://samsaffron.com/archive/2011/05/02/A+day+in+the+life+of+a+slow+page+at+Stack+Overflow">Stack Overflow</a> and <a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NuGetPackageOfTheWeek9ASPNETMiniProfilerFromStackExchangeRocksYourWorld.aspx">Mini Profiler</a>) complained to me on Skype that he was finding it very irritating that every time he updated his project outside of Visual Studio he would be prompted to "Reload Project" and would lose all his open files because Visual Studio would close them. </p> <p>This apparently is becoming kind of an issue at Stack Overflow. Since they use distributed source control and often have a dozen or more folks all coding inside the same project they are integrating all the time. They'll be deep into something, update their project to test it and all their open windows close. </p> <p>It's a weird Visual Studio behavior that I've never understood. Visual Studio saves all your open files and window positions when you close the IDE and restores them when you open your solution. But when you open a project then right click and "Unload Project" you'll lose all your windows. I've reported it as a bug and it's <a href="http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2654545-don-t-close-all-files-when-a-project-file-is-edite">also been voted up at User Voice</a>, <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3783648/is-there-a-setting-in-vs-2010-that-will-allow-it-to-recover-open-files-after-a-p/10407884\">visited as a Question at StackOverflow</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/Nick_Craver/status/196558958599741440">a few folks have tweeted about it</a> (The SO guys with their thumbs on the scale, no doubt) and been bugging some folks but then I got the idea to just fix it myself. It'd be a good chance to write my first Visual Studio Add-In, see if this is even possible, and fix an irritant at the same time. </p> <p><strong>DOWNLOAD: </strong><a href="http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/6705affd-ca37-4445-9693-f3d680c92f38"><strong>Workspace Reloader Visual Studio Add-in</strong></a><strong> </strong>- <em>"This package will reload the code files you had open when your project file was modified and unloaded then reloaded"</em></p> <p><strong>Warranty: </strong>To be clear this is the smallest of extensions. It only listens to two events and it's only 12k so you have no reason that I know of to be afraid of it. Plus, it <strong><em>works on my machine </em></strong>so you've got that going for you.</p> <h3>Creating a Visual Studio Extension</h3> <p><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885119.aspx">Developing Visual Studio Extensions</a> requires some patience. It's gotten a lot better with Visual Studio 2010 but back in the 2003-2005 days it was really hairy. There's a number of different kinds of things you can extend. You can add menus, add tool bars, commands, new templates, new kinds of designers and visualizers, as well as use just the shell to create your own IDE. </p> <p>I wanted to create an add-in with Zero UI. I had no need for buttons or menus, I just wanted to listen to events and act on them. I downloaded the Visual Studio 2010 SDK after reading this blog on <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/04/21/extending-visual-studio-2010.aspx">extending Visual Studio 2010</a>. Make sure you get the right version. I have Visual Studio 2010 SP1 so I needed the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=21835">updated Visual Studio 2010 SP1 SDK</a>.</p> <p><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px </p></div></body>