Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch gives you a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. You can extend the functionality of LightSwitch by creating extensions using Visual Studio 2010 Professional, the Visual Studio SDK, and the Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit.

The toolkit provides project types for creating new LightSwitch Extension Libraries and includes templates for creating the following LightSwitch extensions:

1. LightSwitch Business Type
2. LightSwitch Control
3. LightSwitch Data Source
4. LightSwitch Screen Template
5. LightSwitch Shell
6. LightSwitch Theme

More information regarding these extensibility points can be found here.

Requirements
The following pre-requisites are required in order to create LightSwitch extensions. You cannot create extensions using LightSwitch alone.

• Visual Studio 2010 SP1(Professional, Premium, or Ultimate edition)
• Visual Studio 2010 SP1 SDK
• Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011
• Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Extensibility Toolkit

Installing the Toolkit

1. Download and extract the LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit .exe file to your local machine.
2. Double-click the Microsoft.LightSwitch.Toolkit.vsix file.
3. Copy the Microsoft.LightSwitch.Toolkit.targets file into:
   \Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v1.0, if you’re running a 32-bit machine, or
   \Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v1.0, if you’re running a 64-bit machine.

Launch Visual Studio, and LightSwitch Extension Library project templates will be available under the LightSwitch/Extensibility node in the New Project Dialog.  Resources for learning how to build LightSwitch extensions are availablehere.