The Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) Program (formerly Visual Studio Integration Program) allows third-party developers and software vendors to develop tools, components and languages for use in the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

. The program offers partnership benefits including co-marketing opportunities, and Visual Studio licensing options as well as extended access to Microsoft technical and premier support.

The VSIP SDK (software development kit

Software development kit

A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...

) facilitates development of integrated tools and includes development software and documentation that can be used directly within the Visual Studio .NET IDE directly. Extensions to the IDE, also known as "Add-ins", can be as simple as adding a custom server control to the toolbox

Toolbox

A toolbox varies with the craft of the owner. The purpose of the toolbox is to organize, carry, and protect the owner's tools used for trade, hobby or DIY.-Types of toolboxes:...

, or as complex as adding support for a new CLR

Common Language Runtime

The Common Language Runtime is the virtual machine component of Microsoft's .NET framework and is responsible for managing the execution of .NET programs. In a process known as just-in-time compilation, the CLR compiles the intermediate language code known as CIL into the machine instructions...

-compliant language.

External links

• Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN)
• Visual Studio Extensibility Center