As your organization makes the move from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008, you're going to need to move all of the Add-ins you have come to rely on over as well. Unless the Add-in you have in mind uses some Visual Studio version-specific API, the method for porting an Add-in to the new release should be seamless.
There are 2 steps you need to follow to get the Add-in over to Visual Studio 2008:
1. Move the Add-in's Dll and associated files to the Addins folder under Visual Studio 2008.
You will find the Add-in Dll and associated files in the Addins folder under Visual Studio 2005. The path is likely
C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Addins
Copy the files for the Add-in you wish to migrate, and paste them into the Addins folder under Visual Studio 2008. The path for 2008 is similar, and if you do not find an Addins folder, you can create one manually.
C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Addins
Be sure to grab the .dll, .dll.config the .Addin files, as shown below.
2. Once the files have been copied to the new Addins folder, you will need to update the .Addin file to increment the Host Application's (Visual Studio) version number. You can do this by opening the file in any text editor, finding the nodes labelled version, and changing it from 8.0 to 9.0.I have bolded the version node below
<?
xml
version
="1.0"encoding="UTF-16"standalone="no"?>
<
Extensibility
xmlns
="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AutomationExtensibility">
<
HostApplication
>
<
Name
>Microsoft Visual Studio Macros</Name>
<
Version
>8.0</Version>
</
HostApplication
>
<
HostApplication
>
<
Name
>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
<
Version
>8.0</Version>
</
HostApplication
>
<
Addin
>
<
FriendlyName
>Some2005Addin</FriendlyName>
<
Description
>The Add-in to end all Add-ins.</Description>
<
Assembly
>Some2005Addin.dll</Assembly>
<
FullClassName
>Addin.SomeAddin.For2005</FullClassName>
<
LoadBehavior
>1</LoadBehavior>
<
CommandPreload
>0</CommandPreload>
<
CommandLineSafe
>0</CommandLineSafe>
</
Addin
>
</
Extensibility
>
Once this value has been changed to 9.0, save the file, and open the Add-in Manager dialog in Visual Studio 2008 (TOOLS MENU-->ADD-IN MANAGER...)
You will now see the Add-in appear in the dialog. Select the Add-in you have just migrated and you are ready to go.
