I just downloaded a VSIX file from the Visual Studio Gallery.

How do I install it in Visual Studio?

With Visual Studio for Mac you need to register the template in the.addin.xml file so that Visual Studio for Mac knows about it. It does not support.zip files containing projects.

8 Answers

VSIX is a Visual Studio extension installer. You must have Visual Studio 2010 or newer in order to install them, but you should be able to install it by double-clicking the .vsix file. Alternatively you should be able to install it from within the VS Extension Manager (Tools->Extension Manger)

See more about VSIX files at Quan To's Visual Studio Extensibility blog

The above answers didn't help me; I couldn't install it through the extension manager and there was not default application for .vsix. However, I needed to open it (right click >Open with...) with Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector and it worked.

Small update:For VS 2013, you need the corresponding version of NuGet: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/4ec1526c-4a8c-4a84-b702-b21a8f5293ca.Otherwise, the version selecter will tell you it's already installed on all fitting versions.

To summarise, there are three options:

1. Install via Extension Manager (Tools/Options)
2. Install via Visual Studio Gallery.com (download and open directly or save then double-click)
3. Install via 'xcopy' into %localappdata%MicrosoftVisualStudio10.0Extensions

Adding Templates To Visual Studio 2010

If all the above options fail, try installing it from the command-line.Here's how (on StackOverflow):

VSIXInstaller.exe /quiet some_extension.vsix

You can find VSIXInstaller here (on your local PC - depending on the Visual Studio version replace 14.0 by the version you're using):

C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0Common7IDE

To display the installer dialog(s), remove the /quiet option.

Note:

• To uninstall a VSIX extension, you need to know its vsixID (here is described how to get it), then you can use

  VSIXInstaller.exe /uninstall:vsixID

• To install/uninstall VSIX files for a specific Visual Studio version, use the switches /skuName:name and /skuVersion:version; you can see all options of the command line tool if you type VSIXInstaller.exe /? in the developer command prompt.

Did you know that the VSIX is nothing more than a ZIP file. After double clicking on it, the VS selector prompts you for each installed version of Visual Studio to install it too. This is where vs picks an arbitrary folder name and unpacks the content to the %AppData%LocalMicrosoftVisualStudio##Extensions folder. So Benjol was partially correct save for unpacking the files from the VXIS(again which is a Zip).

VSIXInstallerinC:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual StudioInstallerresourcesappServiceHubServicesMicrosoft.VisualStudio.Setup.Service

I think you just reload Visual Studio after downloading the VSIX. During the launch Visual Studio looks for the VSIX file and incorporatesall the required changes.

Here are the instructions for Visual Studio Code.1 step

second step

C++ Visual Studio Mac

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