Visual Studio extension does not load in experimental instance

Question

I am developing a Visual Studio extension in VS2013, but I can upload it to an experimental instance.

I can install it manually in my current instance (from the vsix file) and it works fine, but I can't debug it.

There are no error messages in ActivityLog and nothing. My extension is simply not loaded. (This is not just an extension. The same thing happens with the fresh extension from the project template)

I tried removing / reset the experimental instance with no luck.

I also tried to debug my extension by creating an experimental instance from my current instance with the extension installed. Then the extension was shown as "Disabled" in the "Extensions and Updates" in the experimental instance.

I tried to look for how the registration of the extension is performed in the experimental instance, but cannot find anything. Only found links to the option "Deploy VSIX content for an experimental instance for debugging", but nothing is said about tuning.

My test work currently matches this:

• Insert a MessageBox and / or WriteLine and compile the code
• Delete the previous extension instance in the "Extensions and Updates" section.
• Close Visual Studio
• Install extension from vsix file
• Launch Visual Studio
• Check extension

which of course takes a lot of time.

Answer 1

This is probably a recurring question. Just check the Debug options of your VSIX project. This answer may help: Cannot start VSPackage when developing on multiple machines

If the automatic registration of your extension works, you should find the entries with your package ID in the registry under the following keys:

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0Exp\ExtensionManager\ EnabledExtensions ExtensionTypes 

Answer 2

You need to enable the installed extension from the extension manager. He will ask you to restart the IDE, and everything should be configured