Visual Studio & TFS 2012 – List of extensions and tools (Part 2)
By terje
Go to Part 1 – List of Product Updates for information on Visual Studio and TFS 2012 updates
Looking for the VS 2010 extensions ? Go to Visual Studio 2010 - List of Product Updates (Part 1) + Extensions (Part 2).
Looking for links to the test adapters, go to this blog post.
UPDATE Aug 18th 2013: Updates: Visual Studio Tools for Git, TypeScript, ReSharper, TFS Power Tools, Code Contracts, Build Manager, Web Essentials, Code Contracts, tangible T4 editor , Just Decompile, DotPeek ADDED: Inmeta AssociateRecentWorkItems , Unit Test Generator
Added separate tools section: TFS Administration Tool , TFS Team Project Manager
This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 2012. It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, last version, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 2012 connected to a Team Foundation Server 2012.
Many live in a side-by-side environment with Visual Studio 2010. The side-by-side is supported by VS 2012. However, if you installed a component supporting VS2012 before you installed VS2012, then you need to reinstall it. The VSIX installer will understand that it is to apply those only for VS2012, and will not touch – nor remove – the same for VS2010. A good example here is the Power Commands.
The list is more or less in priority order.
The focus is to get a setup which can be used for a complete coding experience for the whole ALM process.
The list of course reflects what I use for my work , so it is by no means complete, and for some of the tools there are equally useful alternatives. Many components have not yet arrived with VS2012 support. I will add them as they arrive.
The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column.
If you want to use the same set of extensions on multiple computers, you might like to share them easily. Lars Wilhelmsen has a great blog post about how to use Dropbox to share extensions and common settings.
Extensions ready for VS 2012, both upgrades and new ones
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| Visual Studio Tools for Git1 | See Brian Harry’s blogpost | 0.9.5.0 | Pre-release | Visual Studio | Yes |
| EF Power Tools Beta 3 Available1 | See blog post | 0.7.0.0 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| MyHistory1 | See MSDN Article | 1.4 | Free | TFS Integration | No |
| Inmeta AssociateRecentWorkItems | Fast way to associate recent work items to a checkin, reduce need to search around. See Jakobs blogpost for more info | 1.0.0.3 | Free | TFS Integration | No |
Unit Test Generator1 | Get back the ability to generate unit tests from code, also works for NUnit and XUnit. | 1.0.13.717 | Free | Unit Testing (VS) | ALM Rangers |
| Runsettings1 | Item template to create default runsettings file | 1.1 | Free | Unit Testing (VS & TFS) | No |
| TypeScript | See info here, and B.Harry’s blogpost. Codeplex here Release notes | 0.9.1 | Free | Coding | Yes |
| ReSharper3 | 8.0.14.856 | Licensed | Coding & Quality | No | |
| NuGet Manager1 3 | Initial install included with VS 2012. Updates through extension gallery | 2.6.40627.9000 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| TFS Power Tools (This applies to Update 1-3) TFS Power tools (This applies to RTM) | See Brian Harry’s blog post for more info (Side-by-side with TFS 2010 should work, but remove the Shell Extension from the TFS 2010 power tool first.), and this post for info on Update 1 | July 2013(11.0.60506.0) | Free | TFS integration | Yes |
| NDepend3 | Info on updates here. Trial available. | 4.1.0.6871 | Licensed | Quality | No |
| Build Manager1 | Community Build Manager. Info here from Jakob | 1.4.0.10 | Free | TFS Integration | No |
| Visual Studio 2012 SDK | Required for using Wix | Published 2.Aug.2012 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| Wix Toolset | 3.7 | Free | Coding/Installers | No | |
| Visual Studio 11 Feedback tool1 | Use this to really ease the process of sending bugs back to Microsoft. | 1.2.3 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| Productivity Power Tools1 | Re-added with new features, now also includes Power Commands, which can be uninstalled. | 11.0.60403.0 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| Code Contracts1 3 | Now on gallery too. Info here and follow the forum here | 1.5.60813 | Free | Coding | Yes |
| Code Contract Editor Extensions1 | 1.5.64024.12 | Free | Coding | Yes | |
| Visualization and Modeling SDK | Requires VS 2012 SDK | RTM (Sept. 29th 2012) | Free now, otherwise Part of MSDN Subscription | Modeling, DSL, UML extensions | Yes |
| Slow Cheetah1 | Tool for transforming XML files, like config files. | 2.5.5 | Free | Coding | No |
| Web Essentials1 | 2.9 | Free | Coding | Yes | |
| T4 Toolbox1 | 11.8.0 | Free | Coding (T4 templates) | No (Author now MSFT) | |
| tangible T4 editor1 | 2.2.1 | Lite version Free (Good enough) | Coding (T4 templates) | No | |
#1 Get via Visual Studio’s Tools | Extension Manager (or The Code Gallery). (From Adam : All these are auto updated by the Extension Manager in Visual Studio)
#2 Works with ultimate only
#3 Also works with VS 2010
Tools (outside Visual Studio)
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| ILSpy | Decompiler –open source. Can also export assembly as C# project | 2.1.0.1603 | Free | Coding/Investigation | No |
| DotPeek | Decompiler from Jetbrains. Can also export as C# project | 1.1.1.33 | Free | Coding/Investigation | No |
| Just Decompile | Decompiler from Telerik | 2013.2.613 | Free | Coding/Investigation | No |
| LinqPad | Info here | 4.45.05 | Free and licensed versions | Coding | No |
| TFS Administration Tool | Handling security and permissions in TFS, Sharepoint and reporting services. Open source tool at Codeplex | 2.2 | Free | TFS | No |
| TFS Team Project Manager | Extremely valuable. Handle maintenance of work items, process, and much more across multiple team projects at once. No more batch files with witadmin! See it at Codeplex | 1.6.4968 | Free | TFS | No |
Extensions we wait for, not yet in a VS 2012 version
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| Inmeta Build Explorer | Free | TFS integration | No |
Extensions which are now integrated into VS 2012
| Product | Notes |
| Fakes | Was Moles in 2010. Fakes is improved and made into a product. |
| NuGet Manager | Included in the install, but still an extension package. Info here. So it is updated through the extension manager. Initial version is 1.6.30117.9648 |