Notepad++ is a traditional Win32 app. The one officially supported plugin template assumes a working knowledge of C++ and the Win32 messaging API.

For now, the only viable option for .NET plugin developers is to target .NET Framework. A compatible runtime is always guaranteed, since the Windows operating system depends on it. Great for end-user experience, less so for developers accustomed to recent C# language features, for whom ".NET" means the SDK targeting multiple platforms and devices.

The availability of modern .NET frameworks on end-user machines is not the entire problem. Any .NET assembly, regardless of framework, is useless to Notepad++ without modifying the binary to make it "look like" a native executable. Until recently, the only way to hack around this limitation involved running a post-build task provided by Rob Giesecke's unmaintained MSBuild extension library. The only .NET plugin template still under active development has upgraded this dependency to a relatively newer one. But the post-processing step remains as critical and error-prone as ever.

This organization is a laboratory for experimental projects looking to bridge the gap between a legacy code base and cutting-edge tooling. The goal is to enable future plugin authors to start new projects as easily as typing dotnet new ... into a terminal.

We hope you can help out!