How to provide a converter that shows up in Conver

Question

Visual Studio 2010 (and newer versions) has the Convert command in the File > Open menu. I assume this is the right place where custom project converters should be integrated into the IDE.

This menu command shows a dialog where the user can select a converter...

I would like to know how a package can provide a converter, that shows up in that dialog.

Answer 1

It's not documented IMHO (at least I can't find it anywhere). It's based on the content of a file called convert.dir located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE (for Visual Studio 2010). This file may not exist or its size may be 0.

When defined, it contains a list of lines, each line corresponding to a converter. The line format is 5 values separated by the '|' character, like this;

relative path to .vsz|relative icon path|localized name|localized description|priority

As an exemple, in my old Visual Studio 2008 installation, here is the content of Convert.dir:

vsz\VJToCSharp.vsz|images\VJToCSharp.bmp|#VJMigrationWizard.VJMigrationWizard,MWZ_ConverterName|#VJMigrationWizard.VJMigrationWizard,MWZ_ConverterDescription|1
vsz\vb6tovb7.vsz|images\VB6ToVB7.bmp|#MigrationWizard.MigrationWizard,MWZ_ConverterName|#MigrationWizard.MigrationWizard,MWZ_ConverterDescription|1

The .vsz file is a standard Visual Studio wizard file.