Can I export and import Visual Studio 2010-extensions?

Question

Hi

I am setting up Visual Studio 2010 on another computer and would like it to have the same extensions as the old installation. If possible it would be nice to just import a package of files or similar. Settings can be managed this way which is very useful but I was not able to find the same functionality for extensions.

TIA

Answer 1

No, but you can use Extension Manager in the old VS to get a quick list of the installed extensions, then in the new one use Extension Manager again to download and install them, mostly from within VS.

Answer 2

Yes, it is possible. You have two options.

First, you can do it on a per-user basis (for extensions that you've installed through the extension manager or by double-clicking on VSIXes). For this, you:

1. Copy %localappdata%\microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions to the same directory on the new machine.
2. Open VS on the new machine, go to the extension manager, and Enable all the extensions. By default, VS disables extensions that just appear in that directory but it didn't put there.

The second option is to install the extensions to %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions. The upside is that you don't need to Enable them all by hand, but the downside is that you won't be able to update/remove them from within VS.