T4 Editor for Visual Studio 2013

If you're working with T4 templates in Visual Studio 2013, you'll definitely want to check out the Devart T4 Editor. It's a game changer for anyone who regularly uses T4 to generate code or automate repetitive tasks. This add in turns the basic text editor into a full featured coding environment, making it way easier and faster to write, edit, and manage your templates.

One of the standout features is its Intellisense support. It’s not just basic it brings the full power of Visual Studio’s C# and VB Intellisense right into your T4 files. You get tooltips, code completion, parameter info, and even suggestions for template directives. It feels just like writing regular code in Visual Studio, which really speeds things up.

Syntax highlighting is another big win. The editor color codes template directives, C#, and Visual Basic code, so you can instantly tell what’s what. And if you don’t love the default colors, you can customize them to match your preferences just like in any other VS editor.

Navigation is smooth, too. The Go To feature lets you jump to the definition of any class or member right from your template, which is super handy for larger projects. Plus, it supports multi level template inclusion, so you can break your templates into smaller, reusable pieces without losing Intellisense or navigation features.

Other nice touches include code outlining (so you can collapse blocks of code to reduce clutter), customizable indenting (no more manual spacing!), and even automatic code formatting. It also handles large templates without slowing down, which is great for complex code generation scenarios.

Interestingly, the Devart T4 Editor is also included in Entity Developer, a modeling and code generation tool for ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate. So if you’re already using Devart’s ecosystem, this fits right in.

Just keep in mind it’s built specifically for Visual Studio 2013, so you’ll need that installed to use it. If you’re still on that version and work with T4, this tool is definitely worth a look.