Debugging the VSIX extension

Applicable to: SSAS Multidimensional | SSAS Tabular | SSRS | SSIS | Common

Resetting the Experimental instance (so that changes to the vsct file are detected)

The command file for a VSIX extension gets cached by Visual Studio. To flush the cache you either have to increment the version number of the add-in or run the following command

devenv /rootsuffix Exp /updateconfiguration

For Visual Studio 2012 you would run this command from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE (if you did not have devenv.exe in your Path.

Debugging an Extension

Under the “Debug” project setting set the start external program setting to the version of Visual Studio that you wish to debug.

For Visual Studio 2012 this would be something like: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

in the Command Line Arguments section add /rootSuffix Exp

If you are debugging the same version of Visual Studio that you are compiling with

Under project properties make sure that the following are ticked:

  • TRUE Create VSIX Container during build
  • TRUE Deploy VSIX content to experimental instance for debugging
  • FALSE Copy VSIX content to the following location

If you are NOT debugging the same version of Visual Studio that you are compiling with

Under project properties make sure that the following are ticked:

  • TRUE Create VSIX Container during build
  • FALSE Deploy VSIX content to experimental instance for debugging
  • TRUE Copy VSIX content to the following location C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\Extensions\BidsHelperExp

Where is your login and is the target instance of Visual Studio (for the VS 2012 experimental instance this would be "11.0Exp" )

To find the ID of a menu item

from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31759396/vsix-adding-a-menu-item-to-the-visual-studio-editor-context-menu

  • in RegEdit go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\General and set EnableVSIPLogging value of 1 to enable logging.
  • then navigated into the editor and with the mouse on an empty area press CTRL-SHIFT and then right click the mouse
  • note that the ID is in decimal notation and will need to be converted to hex to go into the vsct file

Code Changes for the VSIX version

The following code changes were made to each *Plugin class in order to work with the new Visual Studio extension framework

  • Delete “using Extensibility;”
  • Add “using BIDSHelper.Core;”
  • Update constructor parameters to look like 
      public AggregationManagerPlugin(BIDSHelperPackage package)
      : base(package)

    instead of:

      public AggregationManagerPlugin(Connect con, DTE2 appObject, AddIn addinInstance)
      : base(con, appObject, addinInstance)
  • Add a call to CreateContextMenu() if adding a menu triggered command
  • Delete or comment out Bitmap property (button icons are specified in the BIDSHelperPackage.vsct file)
  • Delete or comment out MenuName property (menus are specified in the BIDSHelperPackage.vsct file)
  • Delete or comment out ShouldPositionAtEnd property (button positions are specified by setting the group for the button in the BIDSHelperPackage.vsct file)
  • add a command id and menu option to the BidsHelper.vsct file if adding a menu triggered command