VS 2005 Partner Program Updated

Third-party tools for Visual Studio (VS) could become simpler to create, thanks to improvements in Microsoft’s Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP) program. The program supplies technology and support for academic researchers, ISVs, and systems integrators creating developer tools that complement VS. Among other improvements, the new VSIP SDK better supports .NET languages such as C# and Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) for VS extensions. However, Microsoft continues to extend VS itself, so ISVs in the VSIP program must watch for competition from their own tool platform.

VSIP Gets .NET

The VSIP SDK delivers a set of APIs that expose portions of the VS integrated development environment (IDE). These APIs allow developers to start with a full-featured IDE rather than having to implement for themselves such common developer functions as text editing. Furthermore, the APIs exposed by the VSIP SDK are the same that Microsoft uses to build its Visual Basic and C# products, assuring partners that they have the same basic features on which to build their products as Microsoft.