Comment Reflower for Visual Studio

Comment Reflower is an essential add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio that provides configurable automatic reformatting of block comments, including XML comments. The program was originally created by Ian Nowland for Visual Studio 2003 and 2005. These versions are still available at the official website.

Sadly, the last official update was posted in January 2006, and Ian Nowland has not been heard of since then. The last official version of Comment Reflower is not compatible with Visual Studio 2008 or later, apparently due to changes in the extensibility architecture.

Terrified that I might now have to format my XML comments manually, I tinkered with the 2005 distribution until I got it to work with Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Note that this port is not only unofficial but also lacks the MSI setup package of previous versions, although there is a separate binary package for XCopy deployment. Both packages include a ReadMe file that describes the deployment and operation of the add-in.

Note: The Express editions of Visual Studio don’t support any plug-ins, so you need Standard edition or better to run Comment Reflower.

Binary Package

The current Visual Studio 2010 port of Comment Reflower is CommentReflower.zip (54.1 KB). This is a standard ZIP archive containing long file names. Just extract everything into one of the following directories, substituting your Windows user name for <User Name>, and restart Visual Studio:

• \Documents and Settings\<User Name>\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\AddIns (on Windows XP)
• \Users\<User Name>\(My) Documents\Visual Studio 2010\AddIns (on Windows Vista and later)

Or extract the ZIP archive into a temporary directory of your choice, then study the enclosed ReadMe file before deciding how to proceed.

The March 2010 version for Visual Studio 2008 is still available as CommentReflower2008.zip (53.5 KB). The only difference from a user perspective is that you need to substite 2008 for 2010 in the file paths shown above.

Source Package

The source code from which the current binary package was created is CommentReflowerSource.zip (172 KB). This is a standard ZIP archive containing subdirectories and long file names. Again, just extract everything into a directory of your choice, then refer to the enclosed ReadMe file for detailed information.

Release History

• July 2010 – Added note regarding empty Line Start field, as detected by David W Smith.
• May 2010 – Corrected description of Visual Studio add-in locations, as advised by Martin Richter.
• April 2010 – Recompiled and otherwise updated for Visual Studio 2010.
• March 2010 – Fixed AlignParameters command. When the first parameter is preceded by one or more spaces or tabs, parameters on the following lines are now correctly aligned with the start of the first parameter, rather than with the first space character after the opening parenthesis. Bug report and fix were submitted by Arnt Witteveen.
• January 2009 – Revised for XCopy deployment to the Visual Studio AddIns folder, as described above.
• June 2008 – Original release for Visual Studio 2008.