Controlling IntelliSense Through Macros

http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2007/11/19/controlling-intellisense-through-macros.aspx
Controlling IntelliSense Through Macros
Hi, my name is Jim Springfield, and I’m an architect on the Visual C++ team.  When I recently blogged (http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2007/11/12/performance-improvements-in-visual-c.aspx)about improvements to Intellisense and overall UI responsiveness, Imentioned that there was a new mechanism that allows a developer tocontrol some of the Intellisense options.  Thiswill work on the released version of Visual Studio 2008 or on VisualStudio 2005 if you have installed the publicly available QFE (alsocalled a General Distribution Release, or “GDR”) for VS2005.
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=9436
Here are a couple of late-breaking notes about the GDR.  This GDR requires VS2005 SP1, so make sure and install that first.  Also, there are apparently problems with installing the GDR on non-English versions of VS.  Hopefully, this is resolved soon.
Ingeneral, these advanced settings should be unnecessary except forextremely large solutions or other special situations, especially giventhe improvements we recently implemented.  Whilethere is no UI provided for accessing these settings, I will describehow you can create macros and assign those macros to toolbar buttons inorder to more easily access these settings.
First, bring up the Macro Explorer, which can be accessed through “Tools|Macros|Macro Explorer”.  In the Macro Explorer window, right click on the “Macros” node and select “New Macro Project”.  Select “Macro Project”, give it the name “Intellisense”, and specify a location to save it.  A macro project will be created along with a module called “Module1”.  Change the name of the module to “IntellisenseModule” by right clicking on the module and selecting “Rename”.  Next, right click on the module and select “Edit”.  This will bring up a new Visual Studio window with an empty module in it.  Paste the code from Figure 1 into this window and then select “File|Close and Return”.  You should see the five subroutines listed underneath the module now.
OK, you now have the code in place and you just need to assign these macros to toolbar buttons.  Select the “Tools|Customize…” menu item and click the “New…” button on the toolbars tab of the dialog that came up.  Give it the name “Intellisense” and click OK.  There should be an empty toolbar just to the right of the dialog box.  Select the “Commands” tab in the dialog, and scroll down the categories list box and select “Macros” from the list.  You should see the macros from the code you previously pasted.  The first one should be named “Intellisense.IntellisenseModule.DeleteNcbAndReload”.  Click and drag each of the five macros to the toolbar that you just created.  As you drop each one, a button will be created with just the name of the macro displayed on the button.  Afterdropping the button onto the toolbar, you can right click on eachbutton and change the text and pick an icon for the button.
To give you a preview, here is what it looks like when everything is done.  In your version, the text doesn’t need to be this long or you could create custom icons for it.  You could also add these commands to menus.
Intellisense On
This is the normal mode of operation and all aspects of Intellisense will be operating as normal.
Intellisense Off
Inthis mode, most of Intellisense is disabled, although if an NCB fileexists, it will be opened, however no background parsing or updating orany queries will be directed to it.  This isn’t quite the same as deleting “feacp.dll”, which some customers have resorted to, although it is very close to the same.
Intellisense NoUpdate
This setting disables any reparsing of files when they become dirty and therefore no significant updates to the NCB are made.  This mode is useful when editing core header files that would trigger a reparse of significant portions of the solution.  Whenyou turn Intellisense back on after being in this mode, the IDE will doa rescan of the solution and mark any changed files for reparsing.  Thisscan isn’t very expensive and is identical to what happens when youopen a solution, but if a significant number of files need reparsing,that work will still happen in the background.
Intellisense Status
This macro queries for status and displays a message box showing what the current Intellisense settings are.
DeleteNcbAndReload
This macro doesn’t actually rely on any new functionality.  It simply closes the solution, deletes the corresponding NCB, and reloads the solution.  This is useful if Intellisense starts acting flaky such as not returning any correct information.  When the solution is reloaded, it will reparse the solution and regenerate the NCB file.
Important notes:
1)      Thesesettings are persisted when the IDE is shutdown and are not tied to asolution or project, so don’t turn off Intellisense for one solutionand then wonder why it isn’t working for another solution.  It is probably possible to create a macro that will remind you of this when loading a solution, but I haven’t looked into that.
2)      Eventhough the settings are not per solution, changes to the settings maybe ignored if there is no VC solution loaded, so make sure you have aVC solution open before changing the settings.
(The actual issue is whether vcpkg.dll is loaded in the VS process.  If it isn’t these macros won’t change the real settings.)
Figure 1
Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports System.Diagnostics
Enum ISENSE_FLAGS
ISENSE_NORMAL = 0       ‘normal (Intellisense On)
ISENSE_NOBG = &H1       ‘no bg parsing (Intellisense Updating Off - although NCB file will be opened r/w and repersisted at shutdown)
ISENSE_NOQUERY = &H2    ‘no queries (don‘t run any ISense queries)
ISENSE_NCBRO = &H4      ‘no saving of NCB (must be set before opening NCB, doesn‘t affect updating or queries, just persisting of NCB)
ISENSE_OFF = &H7        ‘no bg parsing, no queries, no saving of NCB, ncb will still be opened, however
End Enum
Public Module IntellisenseModule
Sub Intellisense_NoUpdate()
DTE.Properties("TextEditor","C/C++ Specific").Item("IntellisenseOptions").Value =ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NOBG Or ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NCBRO
End Sub
Sub Intellisense_Off()
DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "C/C++ Specific").Item("IntellisenseOptions").Value = ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_OFF
End Sub
Sub Intellisense_On()
DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "C/C++ Specific").Item("IntellisenseOptions").Value = ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NORMAL
End Sub
Sub Intellisense_Status()
Dim x
x = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "C/C++ Specific").Item("IntellisenseOptions").Value
Dim result
If x = ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NORMAL Then
result = "Intellisense On"
ElseIf x = ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_OFF Then
result = "Intellisense Off"
Else
If x And ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NOBG Then
result = "No background parsing. "
End If
If x And ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NOQUERY Then
result = result + "No Intellisense queries in IDE. "
End If
If x And ISENSE_FLAGS.ISENSE_NCBRO Then
result = result + "No saving of NCB file. "
End If
End If
MsgBox(result)
End Sub
Sub DeleteNcbAndReload()
Dim name
Dim namesln
namesln = DTE.Solution.FullName()
If Len(namesln) > 4 Then
name = Left(namesln, Len(namesln) - 4) & ".ncb"
If MsgBox("This may take a while.  Closing solution, deleting " & name & ", and reopening solution.", MsgBoxStyle.OkCancel) = MsgBoxResult.Ok Then
DTE.Solution.Close()
Kill(name)
MsgBox("NCB deleted", MsgBoxStyle.OkOnly)
DTE.Solution.Open(namesln)
End If
Else
MsgBox("No solution is currently loaded.", MsgBoxStyle.OkOnly)
End If
End Sub
End Module