Restrictions on installing extensions or add-ins in Visual Studio 2010 Express

Question

I installed MSVC++ 2010 Express and trying to figure which extensions (vsix) are available to install. There are some extensions in the Extension Manager (section Online Gallery). All of them from Visual Studio Gallery. To be sure I installed some extension. It, therefore, cannot be said that the express editions of Visual Studio do not support installing Extensions or Add-Ins. At first I decided that Visual Studio Gallery is the place for allowed extensions. I downloaded from there PowerConsole extension and tried to install it. However, I got message box with following text:

Visual Studio Extension Installer
This extension is not installable on any currently installed products.

The question is, What are exact limitations for installing extensions in Visual Studio 2010 Express?

Licastro

Answer 1

Take a look at this article.

In summary from above article:

• The Express SKUs only support installation of extensions that are classified as Templates (or Template Wizards) and Controls.
• The Express SKUs do not support tool extensions. Which is anything that doesn't fall into one of the other categories (Template or Control).
• VSIX files are marked, via the manifest, as to which applications they are compatible and can be installed.

Erudite

Does this mean that careful editing of the manifest can change where they can be installed? – Chinch

According to the quoted article, it seems like it is a limitation of the express editions not being able to load tool extensions. The manifest would be for a template or controls that the author was restricting. – Erudite