title: How do I set up Visual Studio 2008 to program in Perl?
body: <p>My company gave me VS2008 for web development in C#/ASP.NET.  I do a lot of Perl programming too and I'd like to start using VS for that so I can have a consistent work environment... but am having real trouble figuring out how to do so.</p>
  
  <p>VS has a lot of nice features but seems pretty hostile towards languages it doesn't support out of the box. Is it really or do I just not "get" the VS way of doing things?</p>
  
  <p>I usually write Perl scripts using TextPad and the features I'm used to having are pretty basic.  </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>line numbering  
  
  <ul>
  <li>soft line wrapping  </li>
  <li>syntax highlighting  </li>
  <li>auto-indenting in/out after open/close brace  </li>
  <li>auto-indenting to the same starting point as the previous line</li>
  <li>brace matching  </li>
  <li>run scripts from within the editor  </li>
  <li>capture script output in an editor pane   </li>
  <li>dbl-click on error message jumps to the line where the error occurred</li>
  </ul></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p><strong>How do I at least get the above features in VS2008?</strong></p>
  
  <p>How can I get advanced features like:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>code folding</li>
  <li>intellisense</li>
  <li>code-completion </li>
  <li>integrated perldoc</li>
  <li>VS-style debugging and code tracing</li>
  <li>on-the-fly error detection</li>
  <li>etc</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>(I see one <em>possibly</em> relevant online discussion in an <a href="http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/perl-mod_perl/3593967" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ASPN mod-perl mailing list</a> , but don't understand what, if anything, it means to a guy like me.)</p>
  
  <p>-- added --<br>
  I'm aware of other editors and IDEs out there: vi, perlmode-emacs, Komodo, E, TextMate, etc.  This question is <em>not</em> about what <em>other</em> editor or IDE I should try.<br>
  While I appreciate your suggestions, I'd rather read them in a thread like "What editor should I use for Perl" and not "How do I set up VS to accomplish my goal"</p>
  
  <p>-- added --
  After doing some additional research I've concluded that you just can't get there from here.  The only option would be to write my own language plugin.  Considering the time commitment to make something usable I think I'm just better off using a different editor. Thanks anyway guys</p>