I'm sitting through the two-day Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) Developers Conference this week and Rico Mariani gave his roadmap to Visual Studio extensibility. Here are some highlights of the coming, "decade worth of work" ...

VS10 (the version after 2008, a.k.a. "Dev10")

• New editor with fine-grained extensibility
• Build on Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) which is "COM for the managed world"
• All new features that should support multiple languages do

VS11

• VSTA (DLR) used for macros and other end-user extensibility
• Critical mass for managed extensibility models enables several common classes of add-ins to be built purely in managed code
• Common project system
• Richer, common base types and protocols for discovery, activation, and manipulation
• Asynchronous extension and visualization model and showcase examples

VS12

• Stable VSIP API's enabling a high degree of compatibility
• Extensive use of asynchronous extension and visualization model