How can I add an external tool to Visual Studio with a script or similar?

Question

We want to deploy some external tools to Visual Studio for our developers. Is there a way to automate it through a script or similar or should all of them do it manually?

Answer 1

For Visual Studio 2013, the external tools are managed in the registry at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\External Tools

You should be able to write a registry script to add what you need. Make sure to backup the registry before any updating.