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Legacy Language Service Extensibility

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Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

A language service provides language-specific support for editing source code in the IDE.

Legacy language services are implemented as part of a VSPackage, but the newer way to implement language service features is to use MEF extensions. To find out more about the new way to implement a language service, see Editor and Language Service Extensions.

This section discusses the structure and implementation of a legacy language service.

In This Section

Migrating a Legacy Language Service
Explains how to update a language service from Visual Studio 2008 to the latest version.

Legacy Language Service Essentials
Provides important information about how to develop language services to integrate a programming language into Visual Studio.

Developing a Legacy Language Service
Provides links to topics that can help you create a language service.

Syntax Coloring in a Legacy Language Service
Provides information about supporting syntax highlighting in a language service.

Implementing a Legacy Language Service
Provides information about how to use the managed package framework (MPF) to implement a full-featured language service in managed code.

Supporting Symbol-Browsing Tools
Describes libraries and tools that enable you to browse tree views of symbols in the IDE.

Editor and Language Service Extensions
Provides an overview of Visual Studio editors.

Language Service Support for Debugging
Provides information about and a link to the Visual Studio Debugging SDK, which contains the information that is required to create and customize debugger components used to debug programs.