The Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) provides the user interface (UI) for standard components, such as compilers, editors, and debuggers. Features like Visual C++ and Visual Basic that are included with Visual Studio are themselves extensions of the IDE. The Visual Studio Integration SDK provides tools, samples, wizards, designers, and documentation that helps you develop your own applications that extend the IDE and integrate seamlessly with it.
In This Section
- Getting Started with the Visual Studio Integration SDK 
 Provides an overview of the Visual Studio Integration SDK.
- Visual Studio Integration Architecture 
 Describes Visual Studio and its IDE, and introduces strategies and techniques for extending the IDE.
- Integrated Shell and Isolated Shell 
 Explains how to create a custom tool that has its own integrated development environment (IDE). The Visual Studio Shell provides a hierarchal project system, integration with editors and designers, source code control, and a familiar user interface that may reduce the learning curve for end users.
- User Interfaces 
 Explains how to use Visual Studio services to create UI elements that match the rest of Visual Studio.
- Projects and Solutions 
 Describes how to use Visual Studio projects and solutions to organize code files and resource files, and how to implement source control.
- Editors 
 Describes how to extend the Visual Studio 2010 editor and how to create custom editors.
- Language Services 
 Describes how you can add support for a new programming language to Visual Studio.
- Visual Studio Debugger Extensibility 
 Describes how you can support debugging for a custom language.
- Data Designer Extensibility (DDEX) SDK 
 Provides documentation, samples, and resources to help you implement a DDEX provider for exposing third-party data source objects in Visual Studio.
- Visual Studio Extensibility Samples 
 Describes how to obtain Visual Studio Extensibility samples.
- Walkthroughs for Customizing Visual Studio By Using VSPackages 
 Describes how to create a basic VSPackage.
Related Sections
- Visual Studio Software Development Kit (SDK) 
 Provides a gateway to documentation, samples, and code to help you develop products that integrate with the Visual Studio product family.
- Visual Studio 
 Discusses how to develop applications by using Visual Studio. Includes sections about how to extend the Visual Studio IDE by using macros and add-ins.