Overview

The Visual Studio 2010 SDK includes project templates that help developers create tool windows, menu commands, isolated shell projects, and editor extensions. The editor extensions include text adornments, colorizers, and margins.

The Visual Studio 2010 SDK also includes build tasks that help developers build and debug extensions. Building and debugging are managed in a second instance of Visual Studio named the experimental instance. The experimental instance provides a test bed for extensions without changing the primary installation of Visual Studio.

The SDK also puts shortcuts to online documentation, samples, and other developer resources on the Start menu.

System requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-Bit x86), Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 editions, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3

• Windows XP (x86) with Service Pack 3 - all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows Vista (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 2 - all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows 7 (x86 and x64)
• Windows Server 2003 (x86 & x64) with Service Pack 2 - all editions
• Users will need to install MSXML6 if not already present
• Windows Server 2003 R2 (x86 and x64) - all editions
• Windows Server 2008 (x86 and x64) with Service Pack 2 - all editions
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) - all editions

• Prerequisites:
• Visual Studio 2010 Professional or better


For information on the system requirements for Visual Studio 2010 please check http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2010/sysreqs.

Instructions

1. On this page, click Download to start the download.
2. To save the download on your computer so that you can install it later, click Save.
3. To cancel the installation, click Cancel.

Additional information

Visual Studio 2010 Readme