Go to Part 1 – List of Product Updates for information on Visual Studio and TFS 2013 updates
Looking for the VS 2012 product updates and extensions ? Go to Visual Studio 2012 Product and updates (Part 1) and Visual Studio 2012 extensions (Part 2)
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 Sep 19th 2014: Updated ReSharper3 , NDepend3 , LinqPad, TFS Team Project Manager, Code Contracts1
This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 2013. 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 2013 connected to a Team Foundation Server 2013, although most also works with earlier versions.
Many live in a side-by-side environment with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012. The side-by-side is supported by VS 2013. However, if you installed a component supporting VS2013 before you installed VS2013, then you need to reinstall it. (Components marked with Note 3 below) The VSIX installer will understand that it is to apply those only for VS2013, and will not touch – nor remove – the same for VS2010 and VS 2012. 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.
The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column.
For components that are updated through the gallery, I will no longer update the latest version numbers, as they are easily controlled through the Tools/Extensions and Updates dialogue. In the version column I will just write Auto.
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 2013, both upgrades and new ones
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| File Nesting | Awesome and convenient | Auto | Free | Visual Studio | MSFT |
| AutoHistory | Awesome, local history | Auto | Free | Visual Studio | MS Devlabs |
| EF Power Tools Beta 41 | See blog post | Auto | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| MyHistory1 | See MSDN Article | Auto | Free | TFS Integration | No |
| Inmeta AssociateRecentWorkItems1 | Fast way to associate recent work items to a checkin, reduce need to search around. See Jakobs blogpost for more info | Auto | Free | TFS Integration | No |
Unit Test Generator1 |
Get back the ability to generate unit tests from code, also works for NUnit and XUnit. | Auto | Free | Unit Testing (VS) | ALM Rangers |
| Codelens Code Health Indicator 12 | Awesome ! See this post (Norwegian), and this and this. | Auto | Free | Coding & Quality | Yes |
| Runsettings1 | Item template to create default runsettings file | Auto | Free | Unit Testing (VS & TFS) | No |
| TypeScript | See info here, and B.Harry’s blogpost. Codeplex here Release notes Now part of VS 2013, installs with that See http://www.typescriptlang.org/ |
1.0 | Free | Coding | Yes |
| ReSharper3 | Note:Version 8.1.23.546 and earlier have an issue with Nuget/NUnit/Chutzpah, see here. Download version 8.2 to get this resolved. Version 8.2.1 have an issue with nuget, see this post |
8.2.2000.5120 | Licensed | Coding & Quality | No |
| NuGet Manager 3 | New initial install included with VS 2013. Updates through extension gallery | Auto | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| TFS Power Tools |
See Brian Harry’s blog post for more info | 12.1.00402.0 | Free | TFS integration | Yes |
| NDepend3 | Info on updates here. Trial available. |
5.4.1.8430 |
Licensed | Quality | No |
| Build Manager1 | Community Build Manager. Info here from Jakob | Auto | Free | TFS Integration | No |
| Visual Studio 2013 SDK | Required for using Wix | Published 11.Oct.2013 | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| Wix Toolset | 3.8 | Free | Coding/Installers | No | |
| Productivity Power Tools1 | Awesome package. A must have! | Auto | Free | Visual Studio | Yes |
| Code Contracts1 3 | Now on gallery too. Info here and follow the forum here See new blog here |
1.7.10908.11 | Free | Coding | Yes |
| Code Contract Editor Extensions1 | 1.5.60813.10 | Free | Coding | Yes | |
| Visualization and Modeling SDK | Requires VS 2013 SDK | Nov 10th 2013 | Free now, otherwise Part of MSDN Subscription | Modeling, DSL, UML extensions | Yes |
| Slow Cheetah1 3 | Tool for transforming XML files, like config files. | Auto | Free | Coding | No |
| Web Essentials1 | Auto | Free | Coding | Yes | |
| Devart T4 editor | Nice T4 editor, using this now instead of tangible. | Auto | Free | Coding (T4 templates) | No |
| tangible T4 editor1 | Lite version is free and more than enough for T4 editing. | 2.2.3 | Lite version Free (Good enough) | Coding (T4 templates) | No |
| ASP.Net and Web Tools 2013 | Free | Coding | Yes |
#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 and VS 2012
Tools (outside Visual Studio)
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| ILSpy | Decompiler –open source. Can also export assembly as C# project | 2.2.0.1706 | Free | Coding/Investigation | No |
| DotPeek | Decompiler from Jetbrains. Can also export as C# project | 1.2.1.226 | Free | Coding/Investigation | No |
| LinqPad | Info here | 4.51.03 | Free and licensed versions | Coding | 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 | 1.7.5119 | Free | TFS | No |
| TFS Administration Tool | Handling security and permissions in TFS, Sharepoint and reporting services. Open source tool at Codeplex Version 2.3 is fully 2013 compatible. If you don’t have VS installed, download and install the TFS 2013 Object model Version 2.2 works on 2013 but requires the 2012 Object model to be installed. |
2.3 | Free | TFS | No |
Extensions we wait for, not yet in a VS 2013 version
| Product | Notes | Latest Version | License | Applicable to | Microsoft |
| Inmeta Build Explorer | Free | TFS integration | No | ||
