Create a VB IDE at runtime

[granni]

Can anyone help me on this,

I need a program that allows the user to create a VB Form and the controls on it the way a programmer does it in the VB IDE.

How do i go about recreating the VB IDE in my own VB project?

I need to show also the code panes just like in the VB IDE

 

[jmarler]

If you are talking about writing your own IDE, think again . . . that will be a huge task. You could simply shell out the VB IDE in another process, but that wouldn't really integrate the IDE into your application which is what I think you want.
I think that you should look at this from a slightly different angle. Basically, you want to integerate your application with the VB IDE (or at least that is what I think you want to do). Consider writing an Add-In. The VB IDE model is very extensible and you can write add-ins that offer a huge amount of functionality while still offering the user all of the current IDE functionality. Plus you can pick up on events so that as the user does stuff with the normal IDE windows, your application will know about it. I think that this is going to be your best bet.
Check out this link to MSDN . . . it will give you an overview on the topic as well as detailed instruction on how to write addins.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/devprods/vs6/vstudio/csext/csconExtensibilityOverview.htm

- Jeff Marler B-)

 

[granni]

First of all thanks Jeff the suggestion

i have also thought of the add in part, but that would require my user to have VB 6.0 installed. I am looking into the area where i may be able to create a new VB IDE object based on the VBIDE class.

I will not be providing the full functionality as the VB IDE, only basic things like add/delete controls, adding code behinf that control's events and saving the properties of the controls.

My app is something that allows the user to create a form, design it like though he is using a scaled down VBIDE object

Can it be done? i tried but it seems i cannot create a new VBIDE object

Any help is greatly appreciated

 

[jmarler]

To create a new VB IDE object based on the VBIDE class for users that don't have VB would imply that the VBIDE class library can be freely redistributed. I don't believe that this is the case so you may want to consider that. - Jeff Marler B-)

 

[granni]

yes thanks alot though, i figured that by now so i looking at alternatives thanks again

 

[jmarler]

The only alternative that I could think of would be to write your own IDE from scratch. Ask yourself this . . . what exactly are you writing? Do you simply want an IDE and nothing more? Or are you writing a tool for other developers (who will probably already have the IDE) . . . once again, if your case is the latter, look at an addin. Sorry, but that;s the best advice I can give you on this one. - Jeff Marler B-)