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[What is DPack Rx] [What's included] [Major changes] [Future plans] [Contribute]

DPack Rx (former DPack)

FREE tools collection designed to greatly increase developer's productivity, automate repetitive processes and expand upon some of Microsoft Visual Studio features. Supported Visual Studio versions: 2022.

What is DPack Rx?

DPack Rx is an effort to remedy former DPack limitations: bring it under OSS umbrella, upgrade it for more modern Visual Studio integration, and apply more modern technology and development practices. I also felt the effort needed a new product name.

Driving principal behind DPack design is fire-and-forget user experience with minimal impact on the development environment. To adhere to that principal most of the major features are invoked on demand, present a dialog (if applicable), which goes away once user interaction ends. Little to no impact on the development environment is expected from thereafter. Taking all that into account, features such as ToolWindow support don't fit well into that design paradigm.

What features are included so far?

• File Browser feature

• Code Browser feature

• Bookmarks feature

• Surround With feature - serves as a shortcut for built-in subset of Visual Studio Surround With templates

Major changes

1. Both File Browser and Code Browser features UI has been revamped completely in WPF
2. Bookmarks feature has been rebuilt from the ground using editor taggers
3. Bookmarks feature bookmarks are no longer saved with the solution. This might be subject to change in the future
4. Bookmarks feature ToolWindow's been deprecated
5. Former ToolWindow Mode used by File, Code and Solution browsers is no longer available (see the note above on design principals)
6. Solution Browser rather infrequently used feature won't be migrated. If you rely on it then consider staying with older DPack extension
7. Code Navigation obscure feature won't be migrated either
8. Surround With feature has been considerably simplified

Future plans

1. CI pipeline setup
2. Publish to Visual Studio Gallery
3. ~Setup Wiki page~
4. Migrate former DPack Solution Backup feature
5. Migrate former DPack Solution Statistics feature

Help needed

• Graphics for DPack's menu items

Thanks and enjoy.

Sergey Mishkovskiy