[MonoDevelop] Writing a codegen addin - how to start?

[Michael Hutchinson]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Marc Gravell <marc.gravell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've started playing with MonoDevelop recently, and I'd be quite interested
> in writing an add-in for codegen (similar to the "Custom Tool" functionality
> in VS). Any pointers on how to start writing such an add-in?
> For detail, I'm hoping to add some "protocol buffers" support; the user adds
> a ".proto" file (format defined by Google), and the add-in would (on demand,
> or when editing+saving the .proto) write the appropriate C#. Like below, but
> in MonoDevelop. Is there a suitable extension-point for this?
> http://marcgravell.blogspot.com/2009/07/protobuf-net-now-with-added-orcas.html

We don't have VS-compatible "custom tool" functionality implemented in
MD right now, though it would be useful to have, particularly as we
migrate towards using xbuild for the build.

The "easy" way to do this in MD right now would be to write a build
extension that, pre-build, would process files with a certain build
action. The "right" way would be to figure out how to support VS-style
custom tools.

-- 
Michael Hutchinson
http://mjhutchinson.com