Make The Visual Studio Extensions Compatible With Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview

Do you use Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and miss your extensions? Well, I do! Especially, ADO.NET C# DbContext Generator. We'll see how to make them compatible with Visual Studio 11 Dev. Preview
7 December 2011
3 minutes read
Tips
14
 Visual Studio
11

Related Posts

3 minutes read
First Hours with Visual Studio Code on Mac and Windows
29 April 2015
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET 5
16
 C#
36
 JavaScript
6
 Visual Studio
11
2 minutes read
Using "Ctrl+Enter, Enter" Instead of "Ctrl+., Enter" for C# Quick Actions on Visual Studio 2015 Preview
13 November 2014
Visual Studio
11
2 minutes read
Debugging ASP.NET vNext Beta Builds with Visual Studio 14 CTP 3
5 October 2014
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET vNext
8
 Tips
14
 Visual Studio
11
2 minutes read
Quickly Hosting Static Files In Your Development Environment with Node http-server
28 September 2014
HTTP
11
 nodejs
2
 Tips
14
4 minutes read
Replace the Default Server of OwinHost.exe with Nowin in Visual Studio 2013
27 September 2013
Katana
7
 OWIN
8
 Visual Studio
11
5 minutes read
Good Old F5 Experience With OwinHost.exe on Visual Studio 2013
9 September 2013
ASP.Net
101
 Katana
7
 OWIN
8
 Visual Studio
11
2 minutes read
Basics of Git Rebase
30 March 2013
Git
7
 Tips
14
3 minutes read
Installing hub Extension for Git (by defunkt) on Windows to Work With GitHub More Efficiently
19 January 2013
Git
7
 GitHub
4
 Tips
14
4 minutes read
Working with IIS Express Self-signed Certificate, ASP.NET Web API and HttpClient
23 October 2012
ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET Web API
49
 PowerShell
6
 Visual Studio
11
1 minutes read
Get the Start Navigation Sound Back on Windows 8
18 August 2012
Tips
14
 Windows 8
1
4 minutes read
Visual Studio 11 Beta Code-Named "Juneau" SQL Server Database Project - Quick Overview
7 April 2012
MS SQL
6
 Visual Studio
11
3 minutes read
Unit Testing With xUnit.net for ASP.NET MVC Web Applications - Part 1
16 October 2011
ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET MVC
42
 Unit Testing
5
 Visual Studio
11
 xUnit
1
3 minutes read
How to Detect Errors of Our ASP.NET MVC Views on Compile Time - Blow up In My Face Theory
29 September 2011
ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET MVC
42
 Tips
14
 Visual Studio
11
4 minutes read
Remove Trailing Slash From the URLs of Your ASP.NET Web Site With IIS 7 URL Rewrite Module
11 September 2011
ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET MVC
42
 Deployment
6
 IIS
4
 Tips
14
3 minutes read
MCTS 70-515, Failed but I'm Gonna Beat It Next Time - Throughout MCTS Exam Overview and Experience
14 May 2011
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 Microsoft
6
 Tips
14
3 minutes read
We Love .NET 4 - Clean Web Control IDs with ClientIDMode Property to Static and Predictable
24 March 2011
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 C#
36
 Tips
14
2 minutes read
File By File Deployment Process with MSDeploy Inside Visual Studio
5 March 2011
.NET
75
 Deployment
6
 Tips
14
 Visual Studio
11
2 minutes read
Local IIS 7.0 - CS0016: Could not write to output file / Microsoft.Net > Framework > v4.0.30319 > Temporary ASP.NET Files
5 March 2011
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 Deployment
6
 IIS
4
 Tips
14
1 minutes read
ASP.NET MVC : Throwing 404 Exceptions Manually From Controller When Model is Null
17 February 2011
.NET
75
 ASP.Net
101
 ASP.NET MVC
42
 C#
36
 Tips
14

works-on-my-machine-seal-of-approvalDo you use Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and miss your extensions? Well, I do! Especially, ADO.NET C# DbContext Generator.

As you know, for now Visual Studio extensions are not compatible with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview.

image

This is normal because it is Developer Preview. Even, I opened up a thread for that on Stackoverflow: Visual Studio Extensions and Visual Studio 11 Dev. Preview and @betty replied to my post after a long time with an amazing answer. I never developed a Visual Studio extension before and I am not familiar with the drill so I thought it is not possible to tweak the extensions so that they can be compatible with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview but it turns out that it is as easy as pie. How so? Here are the steps:

Oww, by the way, this thing works on my machine and I am not guarantee that it will work on yours as well. Even worse, it can completely screw your machine up. So, take the risk here and don’t swear to me.

I also assume that the ADO.NET C# DbContext Generator does not integrate with Visual Studio that much so there was no big compatibility problems but I won’t try this for the extensions like VSCommands 2010, Web Essentials, etc. If you try, please let me know how it went. Anyway, here is the drill:

First of all, download the extension from Visual Studio Gallery.

image

I am not sure if you are aware of it but vsix files are actually zip files just like NuGet package files (nupkg) and MS Word files (docx). So, change the extension of the file we have downloaded from vsix to zip:

image image

Unzip the zip file and you will see a file called extension.vsixmanifest under root folder. No, it is not a zip file, too Open-mouthed smile It is an xml file though. Open it up with a text editor and find the node called SupportedProducts:

image

Just change the value of version attribute of VisualStudio node to 11.0 and save it.

image

This is actually enough for the extension compatibility standpoint but ADO.NET C# DbContext Generator extension has some dependencies which are specific to Visual Studio 2010 (not sure on that though). So,we have one more step to go as well.

Navigate to /T/code/ folder and you will see a zip file there:

image

Unzip it:

image

Open up the file called ADONETArtifactGenerator_DbContextCSharp.vstemplate with a text editor this time and you will notice a node like below:

  <WizardExtension>
    <Assembly>Microsoft.Data.Entity.Design, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a</Assembly>
    <FullClassName>Microsoft.Data.Entity.Design.VisualStudio.ModelWizard.AddArtifactGeneratorWizard</FullClassName>
  </WizardExtension>

Change this one with the below code:

  <WizardExtension>
    <Assembly>Microsoft.Data.Entity.Design, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a</Assembly>
    <FullClassName>Microsoft.Data.Entity.Design.VisualStudio.ModelWizard.AddArtifactGeneratorWizard</FullClassName>
  </WizardExtension>

Don’t ask me why because I have no clue. I assumed that it was a versioning issue and it works this way. Remember, this is developer preview. Not even alpha or beta so don’t look for logic that much.

Save the file and zip it up again.

image,

Don’t forget to delete other files. You just need that zip file inside the code folder.

Lastly, go under the root and zip all the files:

image

image

Now we have a zip file again. Change the extension from zip to vsix and double click on that

imageimage

Now we get it working smoothly:

imageimage

Now when you want to continue you way with database first approach, you can follow the steps which are explained here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2011/11/01/ef-4-2-released.aspx

Here is the quote from that blog post:

Model First & Database First Templates

The templates for using the DbContext API with Model First and Database First are now available under the “Online Templates” tab when “Right-Click –> Add Code Generation Item…” is selected on the EF Designer.

Instead of navigating to "Online Templates" tab, you will find the code gen. file under the "Code" tab:

image

Admit it, we totally nailed that thing Winking smile