Will it work with isolated shell redistributables?

[yallie]

This project looks very promising! But VS as a pre-requisite is a serious drawback.
Is Visual Studio Isolated Shell redistributable enough for VSEmbed to work?

[SLaks]

That's a good question!

I've never worked with Isolated Shell, so I don't know for certain.

My path discovery logic (source) probably won't discover Isolated Shell installations.
However, I could add a Load() method that takes a path, allowing you to explicitly load an Isolated Shell installation.
The path must contain all ofthe VS assemblies I consume (every editor DLL & some shell DLLs), devenv.exe (the settings loader takes a path to this), and PrivateAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Platform.VSEditor.Interop.dll.

Roslyn will not work, since (I assume) Isolated Shell does not include Roslyn assemblies. (I also use closed-source, non-redistributable Roslyn assemblies like EditorFeatures & MVS.VS.LanguageServices)

Do you know how Isolated Shell installations work? Where are they in the registry?

I also don't know the licensing terms.
It looks like the DLLs are available from here; if that allows independent redist, I could make my own standalone (non-Roslyn) package from those DLLs and a separate loader.

[SLaks]

It looks like the license does not allow independent redist:

You may not

• publish the software for others to copy;

[SLaks]

Reading further, it looks like you can redistribute the Isolated Shell installer itself, which should be enough for this to work. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb685514.aspx
I'll experiment with this later.

[yallie]

Thanks for you reply!

I have never worked myself with isolated shell-based projects. I know that they include everything required for building a proper IDE (i.e., editor, toolbox, intellisense, etc), and some real-world IDEs indeed use this. Isolated shell doesn't include VS language packages for C#/VB/F#, however. But that's Roslyn part — parsing, syntax trees, completion services and even solution/project management.

it looks like you can redistribute the Isolated Shell installer itself, which should be enough for this to work.

Yes, that's what I meant, using VS isolated shell redistributable package as a pre-requisite. It's around 180 megabytes, compared to ~4 gigs of VS Express 2013.

I'll experiment with this later.

Thanks a lot! Looking forward to hearing from you.

[SLaks]

As I mentioned earlier, Roslyn will not work without a Roslyn-enabled VS installed, even if you get Roslyn from NuGet, because I use a bunch of closed-source, VS-only assemblies to integrate with the editor.

[yallie]

Ah, I've overlooked that, sorry. VS shell redistributable is not enough then...

[SLaks]

Note that the basic (non-language-specific) editor will still work fine.

[yallie]

Yes, I understand that, but my main point of interest is Roslyn-based code completion editor for C#.

[SLaks]

Looking further, it looks like NuGet might have enough packages to allow Roslyn with a pure Dev14 installation.
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Features/
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.VisualStudio.LanguageServices/

Note that Roslyn will not (easily) work on pre-Dev14; it uses new editor APIs for things like code actions (quick fixes).
It might be possible to exclude those and make the core of the Roslyn editors work on earlier versions; I'm not sure.
That may have issues with IntelliSense icons and with changed editor behaviors.

[yallie]

Also, EditorFeatures assembly is in this nuget: Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.EditorFeatures.
So I guess it worth checking out when VS2014 isolated shell package is released.
Thanks for your help!

[SLaks]

It looks like those NuGet assemblies were published by mistake and will not be updated.

However, I explored the Isolated Shell v12 and found a surprising number of managed language services (web editors).
I wouldn't be very surprised if the managed Roslyn DLLs ship with Isolated Shell 14. It doesn't looks like there are any previews of Isolated Shell 14, so I guess we'll find out.

[yallie]

LanguageServices package was updated twice so far, so I don't really think that was by mistake. Let's see.

[SLaks]

LanguageServices was not by mistake, but Features & EditorFeatures were.