Bordecal.ImportsSorter add-in for Visual Studio 2005

Nicole Calinoiu
October 2005 (last edited July 2006)

Table of contents

Introduction
Installing the add-in
Updates
Loading the add-in
Configuring the sorting behaviour
Sorting the imports/using directives in a file
Known issues

Introduction

Visual Studio 2005 introduces new functionality for automatic generation of imports/using directives when types cannot be resolved. This is a great little addition to the coding UI, but it can pose a bit of a problem for the anal-retentive nit-pickers amongst us since the new directives simply get added to the end of the imports/using directive block. Of course, this causes no problem whatsoever for the compiler, but it's not particularly pretty either. (And "pretty" is, of course, the single most important goal for any code file. <g>)

I happen to be rather picky about what my imports/using blocks look like. In particular, I like to sort the directives in alphabetical order by namespace within the following four groups:

• System namespace and descendants
• Microsoft namespace and descendants
• third party namespaces
• my own namespaces

In previous version of Visual Studio, maintaining this sequence wasn't too much extra work since I already had to scroll to top of a code file anyway to add a new directive. However, with the new automated directive insertion, scrolling to the top of the page just to sort the imports/using block manually after an automated directive addition started to feel very inconvenient. Unfortunately, the mere suspicion that my imports/using block might be out of sequence turned out to be a horrible distraction for me, and I was ending up doing a manual sort after each automated addition. After a few days of this nonsense, I figured it was about high time to automate the sorting, and the Bordecal.ImportsSorter add-in was born.

Installing the add-in

The current version of the add-in has been compiled and tested on the Visual Studio 2005 RTM build (version 8.0.50727.42).

The add-in comes packaged as an MSI, which can be downloaded from http://bordecal.mvps.org/Nicole/ImportsSorter/Bordecal.ImportsSorter.Setup.msi. It can be installed either as an administrator or a normal user. If you choose to install as an administrator, the add-in files will be placed in the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\Addins directory, and the add-in will be available for all users on the machine. If the installation is run under a normal user account, the add-in files will be placed in the user's <user's personal directory>\Visual Studio 2005\Addins directory, and the add-in will only be available to that user.

Updates

The add-in does not perform automatic self-updates. New releases will be advertised on my blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/calinoiu/, along with MD5 and SHA1 hashes for the new MSI download. If you're not interested in reading my blathering about security nonsense, you might want to consider to subscribe to the RSS feed dedicated to the Bordecal.ImportsSorter add-in.

Loading the add-in

The add-in is pre-configured to load automatically at Visual Studio startup. You can manage its startup behaviour via the Tools...Add-in manager... menu item in Visual Studio 2005. If you encounter problems attempting to load the add-in, verify that the following criteria are met:

• You are attempting to use the add-in in Visual Studio 2005, not an earlier version of Visual Studio.
• Visual Studio 2005 is configured to permit add-ins to load, and the add-in registration file (Bordecal.ImportsSorter.AddIn) is located in one of the permitted add-in source directories. (Both of these configurations can be verified on the Environment...Add-in/Macros Security properties page of the Visual Studio 2005 options dialog.)
• The add-in assembly (Bordecal.ImportsSorter.dll) is fully trusted under your local code access security policy. (See the To evaluate an assembly topic at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2bc0cxhc if you need instructions for verifying an assembly's CAS permissions.)

Configuring the sorting behaviour

The add-in configuration dialog can be opened from the Configure the imports/using block sorter... item that should appear under your Visual Studio 2005 Tools menu once the add-in has been loaded. The configuration dialog allows you to specify the sorting order for the imports/using directives, the number of lines (if any) that will be inserted between sorting groups when the sorted directives are written back into your code files, and options for post-sorting display of the imports/using directives.

If you're even remotely interested in using this add-in, I'm guessing that you probably have a pretty good idea of what the sorting groups do. Just in case you're having any doubts, here are some examples of the results that various "typical" configurations would yield on a C# using directive block:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SqlServer;
using CrystalDecisions;
using YourNamespace;
using YourNamespace.Data;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Text;

using Microsoft.SqlServer;

using CrystalDecisions;

using YourNamespace;
using YourNamespace.Data;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;

using Microsoft.SqlServer;

using CrystalDecisions;

using YourNamespace;
using YourNamespace.Data;

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Text;

using Microsoft.SqlServer;

using CrystalDecisions;
using YourNamespace;
using YourNamespace.Data;

using CrystalDecisions;
using Microsoft.SqlServer;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Text;
using YourNamespace;
using YourNamespace.Data;

Some of the configuration aspects that might not be immediately obvious are:

• The <All other namespaces> placeholder may be placed anywhere you like in the list.
• If you delete the <All other namespaces> placeholder, you can get it back by adding a sorting group with an empty namespace name.
• You may add both simple namespaces (e.g.: System) and compound namespaces (e.g.: System.Data.SqlClient) to the list. An imports/using directive will be placed in the group with the best (i.e.: longest) match found amongs the sorting groups list.
• There is no point in attempting to add aliases (e.g.: foo = SomeNamespace) or qualifiers (e.g.: global::System) to the list since they are ignored during sorting. (By the way, this is a deliberate design decision. If you would like to include aliases and/or qualifiers in the sorting, please let me know how and why, and I might consider adding support for your bit of weirdness to the add-in.)
• You may add a maximum of 50 sorting groups to the list.

Sorting the imports/using directives in a file

To sort the imports/using directives in an open code file, display the code window shortcut menu (say, by right-clicking on the code editing surface), and select the Sort the imports/using block item. The exact labelling of this menu item will depend on the language of the code file for which it has been displayed, with the language-specific term for an imports/using directive being displayed. The language-specific labels are:

If you would like to return to the pre-sorting state of your file, the entire sorting operation may be reversed in one undo step, via the usual undo mechanisms (CTRL+z, toolbar button, etc.).

If your attempt at sorting the imports/using directives in a file appears to do nothing, you should check that there are no syntax problems before or amongst the directives since such issues can prevent the recognition of the intented directives in the code model.

Interestingly enough, the C# code model is actually able to detect a using directive located anywhere outside a class declaration (even though such placement results in a compilation error). This has the somewhat convenient consequence that you may type a using directive at the end of your class or namespace code before running the sort, and it will still be sorted into the using block at the beginning of your file. Unfortunately, neither the VB nor the J# code models identify a similarly "misplaced" directive in their code elements collections, so this will only work in C#.

Known issues

• The sorting procedure doesn't deal with multi-line comments particularly elegantly. (It will either abandon or split them, depending on how and where the comment is started.) The main reason for this lack of support is that the VStudio code model doesn't identify comments as code elements, so they need to be parsed out manually. Handling this correctly is a bit of a pain, particularly when one considers the additional complexity involved in mapping a multi-line comment that doesn't start on a directive line to either the directive that preceded or follows it. Since I can't think of any reason why one would actually want to associate a multi-line comment with an imports/using directive, I didn't bother adding support for them. If you happen to have a good reason for adding multi-line comments to your imports/using directive blocks, please let me know, and I'll consider modifying the add-in to support them properly.
• Only C#, VB.NET, and J# are supported so far. It looks like the code model for C++ doesn't identify using namespace directives particularly well, so I would need to use a completely different (and potentially less reliable) approach for locating them in C++ code. Since I do next to no development in C++, I haven't had much incentive to make the effort so far. If you would like to use the add-in to sort using namespace directives in C++, please let me know. If there's enough demand, I'll try to make time for adding C++ support.
• The French translation is intended only as a verification that the add-in localization actually works. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get my hands on a French drop of Visual Studio 2005 that supports add-ins, so the localization hasn't actually been tested yet. Assuming that it does actually work, any French-speaking users should please accept my apologies in advance for the questionable translation. If anyone would like to volunteer to "adjust" the translations (or make a whole new set of translations for any of the other languages in which VStudio itself iss available), please give me a shout.