How do I create a Visual Studio 2015 compatible extension in Visual Studio 2019?

Question

How do I correctly create an extension for Visual Studio with backward compatibility up to Visual Studio 2015? If you use the standard Visual Studio 2019 template for extensions, then it uses DLLs in dependencies (for example, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.15.0), which are not in Visual Studio 2015. Maybe there is a specific list of packages that need to be installed instead of the standard SDK?

Answer 1

I found a way to do this.

• Create an extension project in Visual Studio 2019.
• Remove NuGet packages Microsoft.VisualStudio.SDK and Microsoft.VSSDK.BuildTools.
• Add Madskristensen.VisualStudio.SDK package as described here. But you need to change the version of the package from 14.0.123-pre to 14.0.81-pre.
• Change the used version of Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.15.0 to Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.14.0 in the code. For example, in the control for a window:

xmlns:vsshell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.14.0"

Don't forget to set the appropriate Visual Studio versions in the extension manifest.

After that, the extension is installed without any questions in both 2015 and 2019.