VS 11 Beta issue for add-ins and extensions: asynchronous solution loading

In the Visual Studio blog it has been published the expected Visual Studio 11 Beta Performance Part #2 about changes in the solution loading experience that can explain the issues that I posted some days ago:

VS 11 Beta issue: EnvDTE.Project.CodeModel returns null for a project just loaded without open documents
https://www.visualstudioextensibility.com/2012/03/09/vs-11-beta-issue-envdte-project-codemodel-returns-null-for-a-project-just-loaded-without-open-documents

VS 11 Beta issue: EnvDTE.SolutionEvents.Opened event not fired for a solution just loaded without open documents
https://www.visualstudioextensibility.com/2012/03/09/vs-11-beta-issue-envdte-solutionevents-opened-event-not-fired-for-a-solution-just-loaded-without-open-documents

As the article explains, solution loading is now done in two phases, one “modal loading” in the main UI thread, and other “background loading”, which has important effects on extensions (add-ins, packages, etc.). Specifically the article explains why the previous issues only happen when there are no files open from the last session:

During the Modal Loading phase, we load projects most likely to be needed by the user and block the UI thread to ensure this task has the highest priority. Specifically, we create only the projects that had files left open in the last VS session or projects. We rely on the new Preview Tab feature (discussed here) to help ensure that only projects that you were actively working with in your last session are loaded in this phase of solution load. (…) Finally, we notify components and extensions that the Modal Load phase of solution loading is about to complete, so they can initialize their data models.

and:

In the Background Loading phase, we unblock the UI thread and start processing the background load tasks one at a time. Each time a project is loaded in the background, we notify components and extensions that the project has loaded.  If the user requests information about a project that has not finished loading, we immediately load that project and its dependencies (on the UI thread for maximum performance). We made this operation cancellable if you don’t want to wait. Once all project loading tasks have been processed we notify all components and extensions that the Background Loading phase of solution load has completed.

So, it seems that VS 11 notifies extensions when each project has finished loading, when the Modal Loading phase is about to complete and when the Background Loading phase has completed. The question is how add-in extensions are notified since the EnvDTE.SolutionEvents only has a Opened event and there are no events for projects, I guess that for packages new services are introduced in the SDK and Microsoft is working with “popular extensions” to address the changes and issues, but for add-ins I am not sure if new events will be introduced in the EnvDTE automation model. Maybe we will have more information when Microsoft answers the two Microsoft Connect issues that I opened.

One thought on “VS 11 Beta issue for add-ins and extensions: asynchronous solution loading”

  1. As far as packages are concerned, they implement IVsSolutionEvents and IVsSolutionLoadEvents to receive notifications. I seriously doubt that DTE will ever be modified to receive these events.

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