Adding "Create new temporary project..." button to Start Page

[Neme12]

Adds "Create new temporary project..." below "Create new project..." to the start page in VS 2017.

Screenshot:

@jcansdale Is this something you'd be interested in?

[jcansdale]

@Neme12,

Is this something you'd be interested in?

Definitely, yes. 😄

I haven't had a chance you look at this properly yet.

Just thought I'd mention that GitHub for Visual Studio includes a start page extension (that was written before I started). I'm not sure how this or your PR works yet. Here's a link:
https://github.com/github/VisualStudio/tree/master/src/GitHub.StartPage

[Neme12]

Just thought I'd mention that GitHub for Visual Studio includes a start page extension (that was written before I started).

Thanks. Is this the button that the extension is providing?

Without understanding it in detail, it looks like that extension is using an actual VS API that there is for extending this checkout list, whereas what I'm doing here is actually digging into the UI and modifying it. It's possible there is a much better way, but I doubt there's any sort of API specifically for "insert your own version of Create new project".

I'm not sure how this or your PR works yet

Well... it's basically hacks on top of hacks 😄 I don't know how to improve it more at this point, so I'll try to add some comments explaining the code. There's probably many areas that can be improved, so I would welcome any feedback

[jcansdale]

Thanks fore the PR.

It would be nice if we could find a way to only make the package load when the StartPage is visible. See inline comment for suggestion.

[jcansdale]

Thanks. Is this the button that the extension is providing?

Yes, that's the one.

Well... it's basically hacks on top of hacks 😄 I don't know how to improve it more at this point, so I'll try to add some comments explaining the code. There's probably many areas that can be improved, so I would welcome any feedback

I'm cool with hacks if we program defensively. 😄 The PR icon at the right hand side of the status bar is very similar to this.

[jcansdale]

@Neme12,

I've now split it into TemporaryProjects.14.0 for Visual Studio 2015+ compatible packages and TemporaryProjects.15.0 for Visual Studio 2018 compatible packages.

Hopefully we will now be able to use ProvideCodeContainerProviderAttribute in the TemporaryProjects.15.0 project to have it only load when StartPage is visible.

It's still a bit rough around the edges, so feel free to fix anything that looks wrong. 😉

[jcansdale]

We can get rid of the dynamic/reflection hack now! :-) I wasn't sure whether to cast to ToolWindowPane or WindowPane. I'll leave this up to you.

[jcansdale]

This will now only load when the StartPage tool window becomes visible, which is exactly what we want!

[jcansdale]

@Neme12,

I was hoping that I'd be able to neatly split the extension into Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017 compatible packages.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a way to specify which version of Visual Studio a package is compatible with. Since having two package assemblies was complicating things withing gaining anything, I've combined the packages back into a single Visual Studio 2015+2017 compatible assembly.

I like having the VSIX project separate from package project, so I've left it split into two projects.

Does that make sense? Do you think we're good to merge?

[jcansdale]

I think this is just about ready to merge.

What do you think?

[Neme12]

Can you please wait until I'm able to look at this before merging (I hope that will be tomorrow). Thanks.

[Neme12]

I like having the VSIX project separate from package project, so I've left it split into two projects.

I don't think I fully understand the reason for this. Is the purpose so that the source code can be contained in a regular project as opposed to a VSIX project? But it appears that TemporaryProjects.14.0 is still an extensibility project (although it doesn't create a VSIX), not a regular class library. Would it be possible to make it a regular class library? Can you please help me understand this?

It's also possible I don't understand what a "package project" is. Does that have a meaning or do you simply refer to it as the "package project" because it contains the actual "AsyncPackage"s? Thanks

[Neme12]

But more importantly, I'm not able to build this right now. I'm getting this error when building TemporaryProjects.Vsix:

The "GenerateFileManifest" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Preview\Community\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v15.0\VSSDK\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Sdk.BuildTasks.dll. Confirm that the declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask. TemporaryProjects.Vsix

and 2 warnings:

Targets version (1.0.597.65351) and build task version (1.0.458.27355) do not match. Restarting Visual Studio could help fix this issue.
Targets version (15.8.3237.65351) and build task version (15.7.109.27355) do not match. Restarting Visual Studio could help fix this issue.

Restarting doesn't help of course, neither does cleaning and restoring packages. Is there something wrong with my setup? Do you have any ideas? I'm using 15.8 Preview 5

[Neme12]

I'm able to fix the build error and both warnings locally by adding the Microsoft.VSSDK.BuildTools package to TemporaryProjects.Vsix

[Neme12]

I discovered a bug. If I open the start page in one tab and another unrelated tab, switch to the other tab and then back to the start page, the button is gone. It seems the content of the start page is recreated every time its tab is activated.

edit: Fixed in 493bfcd

[Neme12]

@jcansdale Ok, I think this is ready. Sorry for the delay.

There's more bugs. This needs more investigation. For example:

• change focus to another tool window and then back to start page - button is duplicated
• undock start page - button is gone, redock - button is still gone

[jcansdale]

I don't think I fully understand the reason for this. Is the purpose so that the source code can be contained in a regular project as opposed to a VSIX project? But it appears that TemporaryProjects.14.0 is still an extensibility project (although it doesn't create a VSIX), not a regular class library. Would it be possible to make it a regular class library? Can you please help me understand this?

Every time the TemporaryProjects.Vsix project is built, it creates and installs the .vsix (which can take a while). If the project containing the packages is separate, we can test it without the delay from generating installing the .vsix. It is still an extensibility project, but it's only generating a .pkgdef from the packages.

Thanks for the fixes. It looks like you've made some worthwhile changes. 👍

[Neme12]

@jcansdale I've made a change that makes it so that the button is displayed correctly when switching tabs and focus but undocking still isn't working properly, so this is a compromise. I tried many approaches (as described in the comment) and couldn't get this to work consistently. Do you think it's acceptable to ship this?

[jcansdale]

@Neme12 I'm going to reset my recent commits and force push. Could you reset your branch?

I've extracted my non-"Create new temporary project..." related changes into a separate PR and merged to master. See abde624

Do you think it makes sense to squash this PR? 😄

[Neme12]

@jcansdale Feel free to force push and squash this if you want

[jcansdale]

@Neme12 I've changed the display name of the extension, you might need to manually uninstall the previous version from your experimental instance!

[jcansdale]

@Neme12 Let me know if you're happy with the latest commit and I'll squash + merge.

[jcansdale]

LGTM!

I'd like to get automated deployment to the marketplace working now (#7). It is proving to be a little tricky. Let me know if you have any suggestions...

[Neme12]

Thanks!