Templatizing a project in Visual Studio

Question

I have created a windows mobile application in Visual Studio. I want to templatize this project so that one can open this as a template as opposed to a project.

Is this possible in Visual Studio? I read that there is something called as "VSX (Visual Studio Extension)" which may achieve this. I have Visual Studio Ultimate installed in my system and was trying to install the VS2010 SDK. But its not getting installed telling that i dont have MS Visual Studio 2010 which I apparently do.

Am I going in the right direction? If not what would be the correct way to go ?

Cowboy

Answer 1

This is what I was looking for and it came really handy too.

Export Template Wizard

This exports a project directly as VSIX extension using a wizard.

Cowboy

Answer 2

Yes it is possible like this: File > Export Template than click next :) It will save your code too

Dichroic

what is the difference between this and a .vsix file ? – Cowboy

Visual Studio can be extended by you own apps. Loog at online templates and search snippet designer. That is vs extension and by the way it's handy tool for creating you own code snippets, for fast coding – Dichroic

Once you've exported them, how do you install them in VS2012? So far the only thing I've found that works is running "devenv /installvstemplates" from the command line. The VISX project template will make an installer that runs, but it doesn't add the template. – Yukikoyukio

@Yukikoyukio Late response I realize, but when you click Export Template and you've chosen the project as a Project template in the Export Template Wizard, the next step allows you to choose the Template name, description, etc., as well as a checkbox to "Automatically import the template into Visual Studio". Then it should be as simple as starting a New Project and browsing Templates to your newly created template. – Deth

Answer 3

I would recommend using the TemplateBuilder NuGet package inside of either a VSIX Project or a Visual Studio package. I've created a 6 minute video showing you how you can: Create a VSIX containing a project template, and then editing the template. Checkit out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z33jOo75CH4.

FYI TemplateBuilder is open source at https://github.com/ligershark/template-builder. If you've heard of SideWaffle it relies on TemplateBuilder.

Golanka