One of the applications I support is called ANTS Profiler which provides performance and memory profiling for managed code.

A few times recently I have had customers ask about profiling plugins and although I knew it was possible I wasn't entirely sure how easy it was or what was involved. So, I asked one of our developers about it and he pointed me at the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Automation Samples and he told to install one of them into Visual Studio 2005 and point ANTS Profiler at it.

I gave it a try and sure enough it really was that simple. ANTS Profiler did come up with a warning telling me that Visual Studio wasn't a managed application but I just clicked on OK and as soon as the managed addin was loaded I was able to profile it.

So, I now know that ANTS Profiler can profile managed plugins but I also know what is involved. The discovery of the automation samples have been an additional bonus as I hadn't realized they had existed but could have done with them in the past.