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External Tools in Visual Studio

Visual Studio includes external tools to help you develop and debug your applications. Some of these tools, for example, ATL/MFC Trace Tool and Windows CE Remote Files Viewer, are already available on the Visual Studio Tools menu. Additional tools are available in Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\ or Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\.

You can run these utilities outside the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE), or you can enable them to appear on the Tools menu by using the External Tools dialog box. For more information, see How to: Run External Tools from Visual Studio.

Tools Available Through Shortcuts

The following tools can be found on the Programs menu or All Programs menu in Windows. Click Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and then click Visual Studio Tools.

Tool

More Information

Dotfuscator Community Edition

Lets you protect your application from reverse engineering. For more information, click Help in the tool.

MFC-ATL Trace Tool

ATLTraceTool Sample

Visual Studio x64 Cross Tools Command Prompt

Visual Studio Command Prompt

Visual Studio Itanium Cross Tools Command Prompt

How to: Enable a 64-Bit Visual C++ Toolset at the Command Line

Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger

Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger Configuration Wizard

How to: Set Up Remote Debugging

SPY++

Provides a graphical view of the processes, threads, windows, and window messages of a system. For more information, see Spy++

Tools Available on the Visual Studio Tools Menu

The following table lists the tools available by default on the Tools menu in Visual Studio. With the exception of Dotfuscator Community Edition, each of these tools can be found in the \Tools\ folder for Visual Studio.

File Name

Name

Location

Description

GuidGen

Create GUID

\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\

Generates a GUID, based on specified criteria. For more information, see GUIDGEN Sample: Generates Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs).

Dotfuscator

Dotfuscator Community Edition

\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Application\PreEmptive Solutions\

Lets you protect your application from reverse engineering. For more information, click Help in the tool.

ErrLook

Error Lookup

\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\

Retrieves a system error message or module error message based on the value entered. For more information, see ERRLOOK Reference .

AtlTraceTool8

ATL/MFC Trace Tool

\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\

Displays debug trace messages in the ATL and MFC sources. You can control the type and number of messages displayed. For more information, see ATLTraceTool Sample: Displays Output of ATLTRACE2.

Spyxx

SPY++

\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\

Provides a graphical view of the processes, threads, windows, and window messages of a system. For more information, see Spy++

Additional Tools

Additional tools and utilities can be found in the following locations:

  • Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\

  • Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\bin\

  • Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\

  • Visual Studio installation path\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\PlatformSDK\bin\

See Also

Tasks

How to: Run External Tools from Visual Studio

Reference

C/C++ Build Tools