Programmatically getting the current Visual Studio IDE solution directory from addins

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Programmatically getting the current Visual Studio IDE solution directory from addins

I have some tools that perform updates on .NET solutions, but they need to know the directory where the solution is located.

I added these tools as External Tools, where they appear in the IDE Tools menu, and supplying$(SolutionDir) as an argument. This works fine.

However, I want these tools to be easier to access in the IDE for the user through a custom top level menu (for which I created a Visual Studio integration package project) and through a context menu on solution nodes (for which I created a Visual Studio add-in project). I'm looking for a way to get the current solution directory through these contexts.

I tried getting the solution information from the VisualStudio.DTE object:

EnvDTE.DTE dte =(EnvDTE.DTE)System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("VisualStudio.DTE");string solutionDir =System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(dte.Solution.FullName);

But, this returns the solution directory for the add ins, not the current solution.

I tried echoing $(SolutionDir) and reading it back:

System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo procStartInfo =newSystem.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo("cmd","echo $(SolutionDir)");// The following commands are needed to redirect the standard output.// This means that it will be redirected to the Process.StandardOutput StreamReader.
procStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput=true;
procStartInfo.UseShellExecute=false;// Do not create the black window.
procStartInfo.CreateNoWindow=true;// Now we create a process, assign its ProcessStartInfo and start itSystem.Diagnostics.Process proc =newSystem.Diagnostics.Process();
proc.StartInfo= procStartInfo;
proc.Start();// Get the output into a stringstring result = proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();

But, this returned the directory for the IDE, not the current solution.

I didn't see any relevant information in the solution node CommandBar.

Alternatively, if there was a way to programmatically access the defined Visual Studio external tools and launch them (using the already defined macro arguments), that would work.

What is the solution?