So - this is a question to all the Visual Studio users out there - what addons do you use, and can't live without - and why ?
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It is not a duplicate. That one compared Resharper vs Devxpress CodeRush vs Visual AssitX. – Brian Liang Jul 12 '09 at 16:24
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4Not a duplicate of the previous comment. But of this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49080/what-are-the-best-visual-studio-addins – John Saunders Jul 12 '09 at 16:25
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Duplicate, and if not, it should be community wiki. – Adrian Godong Jul 12 '09 at 17:01
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possible duplicate of [Do you have any recommended add-ons/plugins for Microsoft Visual Studio?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2767/do-you-have-any-recommended-add-ons-plugins-for-microsoft-visual-studio) – AviD Mar 31 '11 at 23:00
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My favorite (next to ReSharper, of course) is the color theme editor extension! – Stefan Paul Noack Dec 14 '11 at 12:41
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- Resharper or devexpress refactor (pro or express )
- .NET Reflector
- AnkhSvn
- Microsoft StyleCop
Hannoun Yassir
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VisualSVN if you're using Subversion. It works amazingly well, and it doesn't mess with Visual Studio's brain-damaged source control bindings.
Philippe Leybaert
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1VisualSvn is cool but it is not free AnkhSvn 2 would be better :) – Hannoun Yassir Jul 12 '09 at 17:29
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I had a hard time with AnkhSvn - not being able to connect to various repositories. Finally gave up, spent $49, and with VisualSVN, everything's perfect, the way it should always be! – marc_s Jul 12 '09 at 20:43
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I use VisualSVN but I heard since v2.0 AnkhSVN is pretty solid, personally for $49 dollars it is a solution I already bought into and has always been stable.
Resharper is a must.
Aside from those two VS2008 provides everything I need. On VS2005 I use CoolCommands to get some things like 'Open Folder in Explorer' from solution explorer too.
I forget... I use Test-Driven.Net plugin to get the right click 'Reflector' and test coverage with NCoverExplorer for the rare times I use it, and the even more rare times when JetBrains implementation of NUnit via their Test runner doesnt work.
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First and foremost: CodeRush - absolutely the best and greatest addon there is - even in a FREE FOR ALL version (CodeRush Xpress).
Next: PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008 - free as well
Others: Only for specific topics, e.g. VisualSVN for Subversion access etc.
Marc
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I knew someone would beat me to R#, without a doubt the best productivity add-on.
Other than that, AnkhSVN as an SVN client and that's pretty much it. IMHO VS2008 is an excellent IDE that doesn't need to many add-ons.
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Not an addon but it's manually installed like an addon and overlooked by a lot of developers: SP1 for VS2008. Finally adds background compilation! Also greatly improved Javascript editing.
JulianR
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Julian, excuse my ignorance, what do you mean by 'background compilation', not found any noticable difference between RTM and SP1 in this area. – Jul 12 '09 at 16:52
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In SP1, whatever you type is immediately compiled to check its validity. Any errors that would normally only surface when you compiled yourself (syntax errors, referencing undeclared variable, wrong types, etc) then show a red squiggle line underneath them. I really missed this feature coming from Eclipse/Netbeans, but it was finally added in SP1. – JulianR Jul 12 '09 at 18:12
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Ah fair enough, I think Resharper has given us this for a long time, but at least it in the base package now. – Jul 13 '09 at 06:02
