Visual Studio plugin
Many Ranorex users prefer to use the MS Visual Studio IDE because of it's power and familiarity for .NET coding. It would be nice if Ranorex would make a VS plugin that was capable of presenting the test suites, repos, and modules the same way that Ranorex Studio does. This would allow us to use whichever IDE we are most comfortable with.

Thank you for your input.
What are the exact features that you would want to have? What should this plugin’s functionality be?
The minimun requirement would probably be an easy-to-use repository in some way, but what would you need in addition to that?
We would appreciate some feedback on this.
Best Regards,
The Ranorex Product Management Team
13 comments
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A VS plugin is *still* pretty far in the future but is on our roadmap.
To help us better track demand please contact support by filling out the support form on https://www.ranorex.com/support-query/ and they will get your improvement submitted. -
Michal Szymczyk commented
It would be really nice if the Product Management Team, could give us some updates on this feature... I also miss many features from Visual Studio/ ReSharper in the Ranorex IDE. That makes working with Ranorex, sometimes pretty hard and uncomfortable.
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Mike commented
Any news on this one? We'd appreciate a Visual Studio Plugin, as it's our go-to IDE and the Tool our Developers are familiar with. Linting and Refactoring Support in Ranorex Studio is poor to put it mildly and it puts up a needlessly high barrier to getting familiar with the tool.
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Ilmar Landers commented
Is there any update on this topic? Test Suite-Editor is most important for us.
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Michiel commented
- Repository editor
- Test editor
- launching recorder
- recording editor
- variables editor
- settings editor.
This is also the order of priority I would give. -
Julian commented
I agree with Dan and Marc as a first iteration that would be fine, the other points are just 'nice to have'.
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Dan Hale commented
I think Julian hits it pretty good but I seem to be mostly in alignment with Marc - this is what I need access to in Visual Studio:
1. Repository
2. Ranorex Spy
3. Rxtst editor
4. Remote agent access.Those 4 items would cover 90% of what I use Ranorex studio for at the moment.
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Douglas Vaughan commented
1) The SharpDevelop IDE is a bit lackluster compared to full blown first party Visual Studio. IntelliSense and design time error notification are key points in that regard.
2) VisualStudio has a vast backlog of helpful plug-ins that I find lacking in Ranorex. This is to the point where if I'm writing code, I'll open the solution in visual studio anyway. This can become troublesome when I want to add things like bindable module variables.
3) object repository and spy. When I'm hammering out code, sometimes I have to stop and switch back to Ranorex to get an object in the repo. The breaks the workflow so much that I'm often tempted (and do) write the RxPath for objects in the code itself. I cringe even admitting it.___EDIT___
Just to point out, you can get (most) current C# features by installing Microsoft Build tools. And adjusting your project settings. This is far from ideal, but there it is.
https://www.ranorex.com/forum/ranorex-9-and-c-7-t13639.html -
Marc commented
I totally agree with Julian as writing codemodules inside SharpDevelop using C# >6 features is a real pain. Most important features for us are:
* Repository editor
* Testsuite editor
* Remote test executionRecordings are not relevant for us, because we entirely use code modules and have no recordings (it is way faster and more flexible).
All other features are nice-to-haves and IMHO should be postponed to a later release.
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Julian commented
In my opinion, SharpDevelop, which Ranorex is based on, is a dead IDE - no longer in development. This means the IDE and intellisense only recognises up to C# 5 and is missing out on the features of C#6 and 7. Although if you have the updated compilers, the projects will compile fine using C#6 syntax etc.
So my first point would be a Visual Studio plugin would enable the use of up-to-date developments in C# and modern IDE features (including code analysis etc.).
Below are the features I would expect from a VS plugin:
1. Repository GUI with access to Ranorex Spy.
2. A visualisation and editor for recordings.
3. A visualization and editor for test suite files (including the data source and bindings).
4. Integration with the test explorer.
5. Ability to create and trigger test runs/configurations for remote agents.
6. Ranorex report viewer.(basically Ranorex in Visual Studio)
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mp commented
As someone evaluating Ranorex, I like what I see so far, but this feature not existing could very well be a deal breaker.
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Kostiantyn commented
As a person who has seen your product presentation directly to the concrete company (2 years ago approximately), I can definitely state that you still try to invent the bicycle instead of try to allow people, who can work with C# code directly, to use all the VS power. I hope that you will apply proper decision as it was done by your competitor Micro Focus much earlier. You shouldn't be so lazy with this question, 'cause auditory of real professionals will be definitely decreased and you may lost potential clients as it was with me few years ago, unfortunately. I hope to see the similar developed functionality to Silk4Net quite soon, because it's ok! to go with the real time right now, not yesterday even.
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Anonymous commented
also VS is up-to-date on C#, Ranorex isn't. They still are far behind C#6.0 and this makes working with Ranorex feel like Java 1.6 in Eclipse instead of Groovy\Kotlin in IntellJ...