As a continuation of my previous post, let's take a look at external tools in Visual Studio, from a SharePoint perspective. External tools are commands that can be run from within the context of the Visual Studio environment. Accessed from the Tools menu, there are several external tools built into Visual Studio, including the ActiveX Control Test Container, Create GUID, and more.

The Create GUID tool is extremely useful for SharePoint development, where Features, Solutions, etc. require unique GUID identifiers.

Here are a couple External Tools I add for use in SharePoint development.

Get Public Key Token and Blob

Make sure the project is signed and built.

Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\sn.exe
Arguments: -Tp "$(TargetPath)"
Use Output Window: True

Or

Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\secutil.exe
Arguments: -hex -s $(TargetPath)
Use Output Window: True

While this is the only command I set up and use regularly, there are many others than can be added. Check this post for some great feature deployment external tools:

http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/2006/10/automation-in-visual-studio-2005-for.html