Visual Studio won't load my VSIX package

Question

I'm trying to create my own VSIX package using the Project template. But when I actually launch it, it doesn't appear to be loading anything. That is, when running the project, it opens up another copy of visual studio, but it doesn't actually load up my plugin. I've compared my plugin to the other sample templates, and I just don't see anything wrong. It seems like it should be pretty straightforward. Are there any other steps besides creating the project that I have to do?

Answer 1

Are you using the visual studio experimental instance for debugging? You can enable this in the Project properties (right click your project and choose properties). Go to the 'Debug' tab and add the following line to 'Command line arguments': /rootsuffix Exp
More information about the experimental instance can be found on msdn .

Answer 2

I spent an entire day trying to reset Visual Studio (2015 Community Edition) by unloading features, deleting the cache directory, using the install to repair -- all with no success.

I finally uninstalled Visual Studio with success. When I initially installed Visual Studio, I had packages errors, like Python, that failed to load, but my Test Explorer worked beautifully. The test Explorer package stopped working in time. After re-installation, everything worked without any package load errors. Also, pay attention to the xml error files, because mine produced exceptions thrown by the package. (The xml error file is reported in the error dialog when Visual Studio informs the package failed to load.