Programmatically open file in visual studio

c#, visual-studio-2010, winforms

Solution

You can call the `devenv.exe` to run the VisualStudio. if you give a filepath to devenv.exe as argument visual studio opens the given file.

Command : `devenv /edit myfile.xml`

You can run the above command using `Process` class.

Try This:

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Process process = new Process();
    ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("devenv.exe", "/edit c:\\Data.txt");
    process.StartInfo = startInfo;
    process.Start();
}

Note - You need to provide `/Edit` argument to open it in same instance. See here: `[msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa991989.aspx][1]`

Problem

I am building a internal developer tool. What I would like to be able to do is add a button in my UI that when clicked will open a particular file in Visual Studio for more advanced editing. I would like to use whatever VS window that might already have open. Is there any way to do this? To further clarify. Its a custom winform app that edits special XML files. Sometimes the user needs to go over to VS to do more advanced stuff. I would like to just open the file for them instead of them having to browse for it in VS.

Original source