Note:
The installer and
the complete source code is available over at CodePlex at
the following location: http://inmetavsgallery.codeplex.com Extensions and addins are everywhere in
the Visual Studio ALM ecosystem! Microsoft releases new cool features in
the form
of extensions and
the list
of 3rd party extensions that plug into Visual Studio just keeps growing. One
of the nice things about
the VSIX extensions is how they are deployed. Microsoft hosts a public Visual Studio Gallery where you can upload extensions and make them available to
the rest
of the community. Visual Studio checks for updates to
the installed extensions when you start Visual Studio, and installing/updating
the extensions is fast since it is only a matter
of extracting
the files within
the VSIX package to
the local
extension folder. But for custom, enterprise-specific extensions, you don’t want to publish them online to
the whole world, but you still want an easy way to distribute them to your developers and partners. This is where Private
Extension Galleries come into play. In Visual Studio 2012, it is now possible to add custom extensions galleries that can point to any URL, as long as that URL returns
the expected content
of course (see below).Registering a new gallery in Visual Studio is easy, but there is very little documentation on how to actually host
the gallery. Visual Studio galleries uses Atom Feed XML as
the protocol for delivering new and updated versions
of the extensions. This MSDN page describes how to create a static XML file that returns
the information about your extensions. This approach works, but require manual updates
of that file every time you want to deploy an update
of the extension. Wouldn’t it be nice with a web service that takes care
of this for you, that just lets you drop a new version
of your VSIX file and have it automatically detect
the new version and produce
the correct Atom Feed XML? Well search no more, this is exactly what
the Inmeta Visual Studio Gallery Service does for you :-) Here you can see that in addition to
the standard Online galleries there is an Inmeta Gallery that contains two extensions (our WIX templates and our custom TFS Checkin Policies). These can be installed/updated i
the same way as extensions from
the public Visual Studio Gallery. Installing
the Service Download
the installler (Inmeta.VSGalleryService.Install.msi) for
the service and run it.
The installation is straight forward, just select web site, application pool and (optional) a virtual directory where you want to install
the service. Note: If you want to run it in
the web site root, just leave
the application name blank Press Next and finish
the installer. Open web.config in a text editor and locate
the the <applicationSettings> element Edit
the following setting values: FeedTitle This is
the name that is shown if you browse to
the service using a browser. Not used by Visual Studio BaseURI When Visual Studio downloads
the extension, it will be given this URI +
the name
of the extension that you selected. This value should be on
the following format: http://SERVER/[VDIR]/gallery/extension/ VSIXAbsolutePath This is
the path where you will deploy your extensions. This can be a local folder or a remote share. You just need to make sure that
the application pool identity account has read permissions in this folder Save web.config to finish
the installation Open a browser and enter
the URL to
the service. It should show an empty Feed page: Adding
the Private Gallery in Visual Studio 2012 Now you need to add
the gallery in Visual Studio. This is very easy and is done as follows: Go to Tools –> Options and select Environment –> Extensions and Updates Press Add to add a new gallery Enter a descriptive name, and add
the URL that points to
the web site/virtual directory where you installed
the service in
the previous step Press OK to save
the settings. Deploying an
Extension This one is easy: Just drop
the file in
the designated folder! :-) If it is a new version
of an existing
extension,
the developers will be notified in
the same way as for extensions from
the public Visual Studio gallery: I hope that you will find this sever useful, please contact me if you have questions or suggestions for improvements!
