Visual Studio External Tools
Visual Studio includes external tools to help you develop and debug your applications. Some of these tools, such as ATL/MFC Trace Tool and Windows CE Remote Files Viewer, are already available on the Visual Studio Tools or Visual Studio Remote Tools menus, respectively. Additional tools are available in <Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ or <Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\.
You can run these utilities outside the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), or you can enable them to appear on the Tools menu by using the External Tools dialog box. For more information, see How to: Launch Tools from Visual Studio.
Tools Available Through Shortcuts
The following tools can be found on the Programs or All Programs menu in Windows. Click Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0, and then click Visual Studio Tools.
Tool |
More Information |
|---|---|
Dotfuscator Community Edition |
Lets you protect your application from reverse engineering. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
MFC-ATL Trace Tool |
|
Visual Studio 2008 x64 Cross Tools Command Prompt Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt Visual Studio 2008 Itanium Cross Tools Command Prompt |
How to: Enable a 64-Bit Visual C++ Toolset at the Command Line |
Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger Configuration Wizard |
|
SPY++ |
Provides a graphical view of the processes, threads, windows, and window messages of a system. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
The following tools can be found on the Programs or All Programs menu in Windows. Click Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0, and then click Visual Studio Remote Tools.
Tool |
Description |
|---|---|
Windows CE Remote File Viewer |
Displays a hierarchical view of the file system on a target device. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Windows CE Remote Heap Walker |
Displays information about heap identifiers and flags for each process that is running on a target device and about system memory that a process uses. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Windows CE Remote Process Walker |
Displays information associated with each process that is running on a target device. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Windows CE Remote Registry Editor |
Displays the registry for a target device and lets you add, delete, and modify registry keys and registry entries. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Windows CE Remote Spy |
Displays messages received by windows associated with applications that are running on a target device. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Windows CE Remote Zoom-in |
Displays a screen image from a target device. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Tools Available on the Visual Studio Tools Menu
The following table lists the tools available by default on the Tools menu in Visual Studio. With the exception of Dotfuscator Community Edition, each of these tools can be found in the \Tools\ folder for Visual Studio.
File Name |
Name |
Location |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
GuidGen |
Create GUID |
\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ |
Generates a GUID based on specified criteria. For details, see GUIDGEN Sample: Generates Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). |
Dotfuscator |
Dotfuscator Community Edition |
\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Application\PreEmptive Solutions\ |
Lets you protect your application from reverse engineering. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
ErrLook |
Error Lookup |
\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ |
Retrieves a system error message or module error message based on the value entered. For details, see ERRLOOK Reference . |
AtlTraceTool8 |
ATL/MFC Trace Tool |
\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ |
Displays debug trace messages in the ATL and MFC sources. You can control the type and number of messages displayed. For details, see ATLTraceTool Sample: Displays Output of ATLTRACE2. |
Spyxx |
SPY++ 9.0 |
\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ |
Provides a graphical view of the processes, threads, windows, and window messages of a system. For more information, click Help in the tool. |
Additional Tools
Additional tools and utilities can be found in the following locations:
<Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\
<Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\bin\
<Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\
<Visual Studio installation path>\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\PlatformSDK\bin\
Note
To find Help for these tools and utilities, search for the file name of the tool by using the Search page or Index in Visual Studio Help.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Launch Tools from Visual Studio