Visual Studio Express takes some features away, in the GUI at least. Whilst following a tutorial on how to write a Live Writer plugin I couldn’t find the option to start an external program on the project debug tab. I wanted to debug the project’s dll which was being used by the external program. A quick google led me to Stu’s blog post outlining how to edit the project file and add the following elements:

<StartAction>Program</StartAction>
<StartProgram>C:\Program Files\NUnit-Net-2.0 2.2.8\bin\nunit-gui.exe</StartProgram>

In this case he was talking about nunit but the same holds for any external program using your dlls. Thanks Stu!

This isn’t the first time I’ve needed to edit the project file and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Understanding this file must open up a whole world of configuration options, which in most cases are handled via the IDE.