State Persistence and the Visual Studio IDE

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 ToolsOptions 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 Toolbox (Visual Studio SDK), Options Pages, and DialogPage.

In This Section

• Persisting 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.

• How to: Export Settings By Using the Managed Package Framework
  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.

• How to: Import Settings By Using the Managed Package Framework
  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.

Related Sections

• Working with Settings
  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.

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

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