We are looking to turn an internal tool we have developed into a Visual Studio Package that we would sell to other developers. The tool will impact the custom editor and/or custom languages.
Visual Studio 2010 has redesigned the API’s heavily to simplify much of the work involved for these types of integration but the key question we have is:
What is the typical adoption pace of new Visual Studio versions? Is there any information out there on adoption rates based on history? How many shops are still using 2005?
This will help us to consider whether to target just 2010 using the new APIs or whether trying to go back and support 2008 (maybe 2005) and testing it forward.
The short answer:
I’d primarily target VS2005 (as you shouldn’t have much trouble getting a 2005-specific add-in to work in 2005/2008/2010 and thus will maximise your potential market).
The longer answer:
As you move from 2005 to 2008 to 2010, it gets progressively easier to write addins. In particular, the new extensibility features in 2010 make it much easier to build and deploy extensions (the older add-in and package systems used in 2005 & 2008 are much more painful to get working).
However, quite a large percentage of users still use 2005 (indeed, there are still a lot of people using 2003 and VS6), but I’d guess that most are now on 2008. Don’t expect particularly high percentages of 2010 users until at least SP1, as a lot of companies won’t even look at it until it’s been out there for at least 6 months and any teething troubles are sorted out. So at present if you want a large market, I think you have no choice but to target 2005 and 2008.
As a general rule, if your add-in works in 2005 it is likely to work well in 2008 and 2010, so targeting the add-in at 2005 is the best bet if you want a large market. Unless there is a specific feature of 2008 that you need, then in most areas there is little difference between 2005 and 2008, so I’d advise you to start by targetting 2005 and only jump up to 2008 if you find a problem that can’t easily be solved unless you use the 2008 APIs. This should work fine in 2010 as it’s well supported, but there is no guarantee that future Visual Studios will continue to support add-ins.
The alternative, as you say, is to ditch the old “add in” interfaces and use the new 2010 extensibility APIs. This will make development easier, gain much more access to the internals of 2010, and be more future-proof… but it will take months/years for the market size to build.