Controlling Visual Studio 2005 with AutoIt via COM

[Angel]

Hi,

I am trying to automate the installation of some macros into Visual Studio 2005. Currently I am just using AutoIt to send keystrokes, wait for windows etc. However this has certain limitations and is a bit error prone. So I would like to try to automate Visual Studio through COM. I'd like to create a Visual Studio 2005 object in my AutoIt script and use COM to install some settings, load some macros, etc.

I found some microsoft pages that explain that to create a new instance of Visual Studio 2005 you can use (in Visual Basic) the following code:

CreateObject("VisualStudio.Solution.8.0", "")

or

CreateObject("VisualStudio.DTE.8.0", "")

So I tried using ObjCreate("VisualStudio.DTE.8.0"):

Dim $oVS = ObjCreate("VisualStudio.DTE.8.0")

$oVS.ExecuteCommand("Tools.MacrosIDE")

I was expecting this to start Visual Studio and opening the Macros IDE, but this does not seem to be the case.

So do you guys know if this is possible and if so what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

Angel

[flyingboz]

In general, two good ways to figure out an application's COM object model are to

1) research application's website

2) find vbscript / vba snippets that do what you want, and convert / deduce / adapt to your needs.

Best wishes.

[Angel]

I actually did both. I think that I have a good idea of the automation model of Visual Studio, which is pretty well documented. However I am not even able to start Visual Studio itself. Does someone have some experience with this?

Angel