State Persistence and the Visual Studio IDE

  • Article

 

The Import/Export Settings command on the Tools menu of the integrated development environment (IDE) imports and exports customizations of the Visual Studio environment. The Visual Studio settings APIs in the Visual Studio SDK enable a VSPackage to define one or more settings categories (groups of state variables) to be persisted when a user chooses the Import/Export Settings command.

A GUID uniquely identifies each settings category and is defined in its own registry entry, referred to as a Custom Settings Point.

Note

The standard implementations of the Tools Options pages, the Toolbox, and the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.DialogPage automatically provide support for persistence. The settings API can override the default mechanism. For more information, see Extending the Toolbox, Options Pages, and DialogPage.

In This Section

  • Support for User Settings
    Describes the registry settings (Custom Settings Point) and attributes used to specify a Visual Studio settings implementation used by a given VSPackage.

  • How to: Export Settings By Using Interop Assemblies
    Provides a detailed description of how to implement support for saving configuration data by using the Visual Studio settings mechanism for interop assembly based VSPackages.

  • How to: Use Interop Assemblies to Import Settings
    Provides a detailed description of how to implement support for retrieving configuration data by using the Visual Studio settings mechanism for interop assembly based VSPackages.

  • Exporting Settings
    Includes a detailed description of how to implement support for saving configuration data by using the Visual Studio settings mechanism for Managed Package Framework based VSPackages.

  • Importing Settings
    Provides a detailed description of how to implement support for retrieving configuration data by using the Visual Studio settings mechanism for Managed Package Framework based VSPackages.

  • 4c0a56ab-6091-4ebc-9dc7-52c40846bacb
    Describes how to manage the export/import sections of the IDE.

  • Options Pages
    Describes the support that the Visual Studio SDK automatically provides for managing existing or creating new Tools Options pages.

  • Extending the Toolbox
    Explains the support that the Visual Studio SDK automatically provides for managing or extending the Toolbox.

  • Extending User Settings and Options
    Describes how to program your VSPackage to obtain and preserve user preferences.