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Registering Interop Assembly Command Handlers

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A VSPackage must register with Visual Studio so that the integrated development environment (IDE) routes its commands properly.

The registry can be updated either by manual editing or by using a Registrar (.rgs) file. For more information, see Creating Registrar Scripts.

The Managed Package Framework (MPF) provides this functionality through the ProvideMenuResourceAttribute class.

Command Handler Registration of a VSPackage

A VSPackage acting as a handler for user interface (UI)-based commands requires a registry entry named after the VSPackage GUID. This registry entry specifies the location of the VSPackage's UI resource file and the menu resource within that file. The registry entry itself is located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<Version>\Menus, where <Version> is the version of Visual Studio, for example 9.0.

Note

The root path of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<Version> can be overridden with an alternate root when the Visual Studio shell is initialized. For more information about the root path, see Installing VSPackages With Windows Installer.

The CTMENU Resource Registry Entry

The structure of the registry entry is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VisualStudio\<Version>\
  Menus\
    <GUID> = <Resource Information>

<GUID> is the GUID of the VSPackage in the form {XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXX}.

<Resource Information> consists of three elements separated by commas. These elements are, in order:

<Path to Resource DLL>, <Menu Resource ID>, <Menu Version>

The following table describes the fields of <Resource Information>.

Element Description
<Path to Resource DLL> This is the full path to the resource DLL that contains the menu resource or this is left blank, indicating that the VSPackage's resource DLL is to be used (as specified in the Packages subkey where the VSPackage itself is registered).

It is customary to leave this field blank.
<Menu Resource ID> This is the resource ID of the CTMENU resource that contains all of the UI elements for the VSPackage as compiled from a .vsct file.
<Menu Version> This is a number used as a version for the CTMENU resource. Visual Studio uses this value to determine if it needs to remerge the contents of the CTMENU resource with its cache of all CTMENU resources. A remerge is triggered by executing the devenv setup command.

This value should initially be set to 1 and incremented after every change in the CTMENU resource and before the remerge occurs.

Example

Here is an example of a couple of resource entries:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VisualStudio\9.0Exp\
  Menus\
    {019971D6-4685-11D2-B48A-0000F87572EB} = ,1, 10
    {1b027a40-8f43-11d0-8d11-00a0c91bc942} = , 10211, 3

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