How to use the C# editor in a Visual Studio Isolated Shell application?

Question

I wanted to take a look to the Visual Studio extensibility SDK, specifically developing over the Isolated Shell. I would like to be able to use the C# code editor with syntax highlighting, intellisense, etc...

I've already read a bit about how to define your own content to support these features but I understand that for a language already supported like C# the needed package exists in the VSSDK and can be loaded into the isolated shell.

So, when creating an Isolated Shell application from the standard VS template and running the generated project, I can create a new C# file containing a class definition, but it is missing the syntax highlighting and the intellisense. I've found some very basic documentation on extending the Isolated Shell, but I cannot find how to enable the standard editors.

Is it possible to load/enable the standard VS editor extensions? If so, can you point me to any documentation or code example that can guide me a bit?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can't do that. It's more a licensing issue. If you could put/enable everything in the isolated shell, then nobody would buy Visual Studio anymore.

Here is a more official answer from here: How to connect C# VSPackage to Visual Studio Shell Isolated Mode to have syntax highlighting

VS languages like C#, VB, and C++ cannot be loaded in the isolated shell. Hence the reason we call it isolated :-)

Additionally it should be noted, the integrated shell does not include these packages, nor are they licensed for redistribution; as they are distributed with the Visual Studio product.

The integrated shell is basically the core VS IDE, wherease the isolated shell is essentially the same IDE, but runs using a different stub application (so you can customize it to suite your needs). But the isolated shell does not ship with, or will it load any of the mainstream language/project services that ship with VS Pro.