Right tool for the job

I seriously doubt that anybody would disagree with me saying that Visual Studio 2010 is the best IDE to date on the planet. With the extension like Sitecore Rocks, TDS and Resharper, the Sitecore development simply cannot be more pleasant and productive.

I’ve just recently discovered a few more Visual Studio extensions that are extremely powerful, especially in Sitecore context.

1. VS Commands:
Though the list of commands is pretty extensive, here is my absolute favorite: “Attach to Local IIS”:

It is smart enough to understand if you have only one w3wp process running and attaches with one click. If you have multiple ones, it will show you this dialog:

And how awesome is it that this dialog nicely shows the app pool name which helps you find the right process to attach to. Sitecore geeks should appreciate it.

2. Productivity Power Tools featuring:
- better find feature
- Solution Navigator instead of Solution Explorer
- Tabs which you can pin:
- better “Add Reference” dialog.
and much more.

3. SlowCheetah
Handles environment specific config transforms beautifully!

4. NuGet Package Manager
For all the NuGet goodness.

I still need to figure out how to merry TDS to SlowCheetah. Based on what I know about the two, MSBuild is all you need