New version of my Parameters.Xml Generator Visual Studio add-in now supports VS2017 too

author Richard Fennell calendar Jan 29, 2017 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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I have just published Version 1.5 of my Parameters.Xml Generator Visual Studio add-in . After much fiddling this VSIX now supports VS2017 as well as VS2013 and VS2015.

The complexity was that VS2017 uses a new VSIX format, V3. You have to makes changes to the project that generates the VSIX and to the VSIX manifest too. The FAQ says you can do this within VS2015 my hand, but I had no luck getting it right. The recommended option, and the method I used, is to upgrade your solution to VS2017 (or the RC at the time of writing as the product has not RTM’d yet).

This upgrade process is a one way migration, and you do have to check/edit some key items

  • Get all your references right, as I was using the RC of VS2017  this meant enabling the use of Preview packages from Nuget in the solution.
  • Makes sure the install targets (of Visual Studio) match what you want to install too
  • Add prerequisites (this is the big new addition in the VSIX 3 format)
  • And the one that stalled me for ages – Make sure you reference the right version of the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell..dll . You need to pick the one for the oldest version of Visual Studio you wish to target. In my case this was Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.12.0.dll. For some reason during the migration this got changed to Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.14.0.dll which gave the strange effect that the VSIX installed on 2013, 2015 and 2017. But in 2013, though I could see menu item, it did not work. This was fixed by referencing the 12.0 DLL .