Developer HowTo
CrypTool 2 is built using .NET and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Before you can start writing code and adding to the development of the project, a few things need to be considered. To make this process easier, please read through this document and follow the instructions closely. This document exists to help get you started by showing you how CrypTool 2 plugins are built in order to successfully interact with the application core. We have tried to be very thorough, but if you encounter a problem or error that is not described here, please let us know. Not only do we want to help get you up and running, but we also want to add the appropriate information to this guide for the benefit of other future developers.
In this first chapter we will describe all steps necessary in order to compile CrypTool 2 on your own computer. This is always the first thing you need to do before you can begin developing your own plugins and extensions. The basic steps are:
- Getting all prerequisites and installing them
- Accessing and downloading the source code with git
- Compiling the latest version of the source code
Since CrypTool 2 is based on Microsoft .NET, you will need a Microsoft Windows environment. (Currently no plans exist for porting this project to Mono or other platforms.) We have successfully tested with Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
Since you are reading the developer guidelines, you probably want to develop something. Hence, you will need a development environment. In order to compile our sources you need Microsoft Visual Studio or the free Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition. Make sure to always install the latest service packs for Visual Studio.
In order to run or compile our source code you will need at least the Microsoft .NET. Usually the installation of Visual Studio also installs the .NET framework, but if you do not have the latest version, you can get it for free from Microsoft’s website. Once the framework has been installed, your development environment should be ready for our source code.
Please read the Build instructions how to clone and build your own CT2.
Before you can start implementing a new plugin, you will need to download the CrypTool 2 plugin template. The most current version of this template is located in our CrypTool 2 repository, and can be downloaded here: (todo: add new template).
The template can be installed by (todo: write installation guide for template)
In this chapter we provide step-by-step instructions for implementing your own CrypTool 2 plugin. We shall assume that you have already retrieved the CrypTool 2 source code from the GitHub repository, set up Visual Studio or Visual Studio Community to build CrypTool 2, and you have placed the plugin template in the right place.
Open the CrypTool 2 solution, right click in the solution explorer on CrypPlugins and select Add --> New Project. In the dialog window, select Visual C# --> CrypTool 2 Plugin as project template and enter a unique name for your new plugin project (such as Caesar in our case). The next step is crucial to ensure that your plugin will compile and run correctly: select the subdirectory CrypPluginsExperimental\ as the location of your project:
Figure 2.1: Creating a new CrypTool 2 plugin project
As the project basics are already correctly set up in the template, you should now be able to compile the new plugin. First of all, rename the two files in the solution explorer to something more meaningful, for example Caesar.cs and CaesarSettings.cs. You should choose a descriptive name for your project. Do not delay this for later, since renaming the project later can become cumbersome:
Figure 2.2: Items of a new plugin project