Twitter Poll Results: Favorite Visual Studio Add Ons

Last night I posed the question on Twitter: Aside from ReSharper, what are your favorite add ons for Visual Studio?  Below are the responses – it’s a great list of tools which can really boost your productivity. Note that I asked to exclude ReSharper because I would have gotten a huge number of replies endorsing it!

Thanks to everyone who responded!

1. chemodax@JimHolmes Ctrl+Enter should help.about 5 hours ago from web in reply to JimHolmes

2. richiehindle@JimHolmes Favourite Visual Studio addin: http://entrian.com/source-s... (partly 'cos it's great, and partly 'cos I wrote it. 8-)about 6 hours ago from web
3. mgroves@JimHolmes GhostDocabout 10 hours ago from PockeTwit in reply to JimHolmes
4. danhounshell@JimHolmes MRU Cleaner, Start Page Killer, TestDriven.NET, VisualSVNabout 10 hours ago from twhirl in reply to JimHolmes

5. RachelAppel@schambers @jimholmes +1 Visual SVN rocks!about 10 hours ago from web in reply to schambers

6. stevehorn@JimHolmes Copy as HTML for blogging code snippets.about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to JimHolmes

7. schambers@JimHolmes visualsvnabout 10 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to JimHolmes

8. togakangaroo@JimHolmes CodeRush Refactor Pro TestDriven.NET AnkhSVN but that's boring. Fun one: CR_ClassCleanerabout 10 hours ago from web

9. BrianGenisio@JimHolmes TestDriven.NETabout 10 hours ago from Tweetie in reply to JimHolmes

10. steveschoon@JimHolmes CodeRush/Refactorabout 10 hours ago from web in reply to JimHolmes

11. underwhelmed@JimHolmes CodeRush, Resharper Pro, VisualSVN, Copy to HTMLabout 10 hours ago from twhirl in reply to JimHolmes

12. SteveJWallace@JimHolmes Gallio, AnkhSvn, CodeRush are the ones that pop into mind quickest.about 11 hours ago from twhirl

13. CharlieSears@JimHolmes VisualSVNabout 11 hours ago from twhirl in reply to JimHolmes
14. mjeaton@JimHolmes ViEmuabout 11 hours ago from twhirl

Here’s the list of add ons I’m currently a big fan of:

• Cool Commands 4.0: It’s undocumented and you have to use a hack to get it in to VS 2008, but it’s a great set of commands to pimp up VS
• GhostDoc: I work hard to make methods, classes, and parameters extremely clear when I name them. GhostDoc helps me get XML comments for APIs quickly built from those good naming practices.
• VisualSVN: Just started using it, but I love it.
• CopyAsHtml: It’s undocumented, and the bits for VS 2008 are hidden away or hacky, but it’s da bomb for pasting formatted code snippets.  Currently I’m using the Code Formatter for WLW for blog snippets. (See this post for great CSS additions.)
• ReSharper: Can’t emphasize the goodness of this.
• TestDriven.NET: Ultimate in low-friction test running.
• CodeRush: I don’t use its templating. What I get from it are terrific visualizations of code, plus IN YOUR FACE! metrics for cyclomatic complexity on every method in the file in front of you. Absolutely something you should have in place if you’re trying to keep your codebase in order.
• Visual NDepend add-in: Again, a great tool for quickly figuring out where your codebase needs attention.

There’s empirical data that I’m a tool whore, so you can imagine my list of widgets goes on quite a bit longer than this; however, these (at the moment!) are a few of my favorites.