Designer Free CodeRush Plugins – The new CodeRush plugin Quick Start

Explaining how to start a new CodeRush plugin can be a little complex.

So I’ve knocked up a few CodeRush templates that should make it a lot easier :)

Step 1 - Import these Plugin Templates into your copy of CodeRush.

(DevExpress\Options … Editor\Templates … Right-click Templates … “Import Templates…”)

Step 2 - Create a new DXCore Plugin project via the “New Project” dialog

Step 3 - Activate any one of the following templates inside your plugin class.

• NewAction<Space>
• NewRefactoring<Space>
• NewCodeProvider<Space>
• NewIssue<Space>

You should now have a “CreateMyX” method which….

• Creates the relevant component
• Adds it to the components collection
• Sets up the minimal mandatory properties.
• Creates the relevant event handlers.
• Attaches said event handlers to the component in question.

For example, one of the more simplistic things you might want to do is to create a new custom Action to Bind to a Key.

Here is the Default DXCore plugin as written in CS…

And here is what you get after executing “NewAction<Space>” 

After a little customization… 

The only think you need to do .. Is to call your new “CreateMyX” method from inside the “InitializePlugIn” method

You have a completely functional Hello World action ready to be bound to the key of your choice

Now you have to admit … That makes things a lot simpler…

I’ve even linked a few sections of code together with some CodeRush «Field» and «TypeLink» tokens in order to make customizing of that default code a little easier.

So if you’re interested in making plugins…. This should make things a little better.

Feel free to leave me some feedback… I’ve done my best to convert the original VB.Net versions to C#…. So it’s possible there were some issues in translation… But that’s what you get for picking such a strange language (I mean C# people… VB.Net FTW! :D)