Same Visual Studio Token Allocation

Question

I encoded the Mancala game in Java for a college class last spring, and I used the Eclipse IDE to write it. One of the great (and fairly simple) visual aids in Eclipse is that if you select a specific token, say a declared variable, then the IDE will automatically highlight all the other links to that token on your screen. Notepad ++ , my preferred replacement for Notepad, also does this.

Another neat and similar feature in Eclipse was the vertical “error bar” to the right of your code (not sure what to call it). It displays small red squares for all syntax errors in your document, yellow fields for warnings such as “variable declared but not used”, and if you select a word, fields for each occurrence of a word in the document will appear in the panel.

A snapshot of these features in action:

After half an hour of searching, I decided that Visual Studio could not do it on my own, so my question is: does anyone know any add-ons for 2005 or 2008 that can provide either one of the above functions

The ability to select the current line on which the cursor is on will also be pleasant. I believe the ReSharper add-in can do this, but I would rather use a free add-in rather than buying it.

Answer 1

In another question about SO ( link ), someone mentioned the VS 2005 / VS 2008 add-on "RockScroll". It seems to provide the “error” function that I asked in my question above.

Rockscroll

EDIT: RockScroll also does the same token allocation I was looking for! Fine!

Answer 2

There is an alternative to RockScroll, called MetalScroll , which is essentially the same with several enhancements and improvements.

There is also a small and simple WordLight plugin that only provides identical tokens.

Both are open source and support code folding, which is nice.

Imho, the panel next to the scrollbar in Eclipse is a much more elegant solution than replacing the RockScroll / MetalScroll scrollbar. Unfortunately, I could not find VS plugins that do this in the Eclipse way, so I just stick with WordLight.

Answer 3

Check the following add-ons Performance Power Tools - Displays an error in the scroll bar and

Highlight selected word

Answer 4

An old question, but ... Visual Studio 2010 finally introduced this feature.

Answer 5

The highlight function is conveniently implemented in VisualAssist . In my opinion, they should both be.

1) Highlight the identifier in the editing frame: Options → Advanced → Refactoring → Automatically highlight symbol links under the cursor

2) Highlight the search result - in all windows. Powered by RegExps! Options → Advanced → Display → Highlight search results

Answer 6

Auto-highlighting is implemented in Visual Assist as a "Find Links" refactoring command. It selects all occurrences of a given variable or method, but not automatic (tied to a keyboard shortcut on my computer).

Here is an example:

Answer 7

About RockScroll: it does not highlight identifiers. It selects only one line in the source code! If there is a similar identifier: ex. _test and test, and the test is highlighted, it will highlight the string "test" in the variable _test too! And it will also highlight the same line in the "sometesting ()" method. So this is not quite like an eclipse and does not work for me.

Answer 8

DevExpress CodeRush does this when you press TAB, when the cursor is in the identifier, you can insert all selected instances. There is also a DXCore plugin (the foundation on which CodeRush / Refactor Pro is built) that selects the current line.

Answer 9

Error string functionality is provided in JetBrains ReSharper. I'm not sure if it highlights links to the currently selected id.

Answer 10

Only for the selected function of selecting words (s) is StickyHighlight .

StickyHighlight supports Visual Studio 2010 and 2012.

Answer 11

It looks like the “Performance Tools" have moved on , and highlighting the highlighted word no longer works (at least not on my machine with a fresh install)

To bring this functionality back, I had to install the Match Margin plugin. Just installing PPT did not work.