WoW:Lua editors/Visual Studio: Difference between revisions
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Notice that the plugin ''only'' works on the 2003 versions of Visual Studio .NET! | Notice that the plugin ''only'' works on the 2003 versions of Visual Studio .NET! | ||
A plugin for [http://www.lua.org LUA]-support for Visual Studio 2005 can be found [http://www.trystan.org/lua.html here]. This plug-in supports syntax highlighting, project support, basic MSBuild integration, and shell integration. Intellisense | A plugin for [http://www.lua.org LUA]-support for Visual Studio 2005 can be found [http://www.trystan.org/lua.html here]. This plug-in supports syntax highlighting, code hiding / auto outlining, project tree support, basic MSBuild integration, and shell integration. Intellisense features are currently targetted for Dec. 2006. Note, express editions of VS 2005 are not compatible. | ||
== Visual Studio and XML == | == Visual Studio and XML == | ||
Revision as of 22:03, 10 September 2006
What is Visual Studio?
Visual Studio is a commercial IDE for software development by Microsoft. It is especially used in application development for the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Because of its high price and rather complex structure it will probably overtax any hobbyist AddOn-Developer. However, it's a well known and appreciated tool for many professional software developers.
Why Visual Studio?
First off: Visual Studio might be a really bad choice for most AddOn-developers out there. It's very expensive, complex and you won't be able to make use of its most powerful features when just using it for AddOn writing. However, there might be some developers out there who are already familiar with it and want to use it for AddOn development out of habit.
Again, if you haven't heard of Visual Studio up to this point, you are almost certainly not going to want to use it for WoW scripting.
You can download Visual Studio Express for free from Microsoft.
Visual Studio and LUA
A plugin for LUA-support for Visual Studio 2003 can be found here. It's basically a simple syntax scheme and does not take real advantage of any advanced VS-features. There's a pseudo-IntelliSense feature but it doesn't work very well. So don't expect anything special here. Notice that the plugin only works on the 2003 versions of Visual Studio .NET!
A plugin for LUA-support for Visual Studio 2005 can be found here. This plug-in supports syntax highlighting, code hiding / auto outlining, project tree support, basic MSBuild integration, and shell integration. Intellisense features are currently targetted for Dec. 2006. Note, express editions of VS 2005 are not compatible.
Visual Studio and XML
This is probably the one reason for using Visual Studio in AddOn-development.
The XML editor included in .NET 2003 is okay, but really nothing special. It has basic XSD support and stuff, but it really won't stand a chance against tools like XMLspy. However, with the newer 2005 version things changed. The whole XML-Editor was rewritten in the new version and can now easily compete with most XML-Editors out there, free and commercial. Although the Lua-plugin for VS 2005 is not as good as the LuaLite plugin for 2003, which is mainly due to the first still being in an early stage of development, the XML-Editor is really worth the upgrade and may greatly increase your productivity if you're an experienced developer.