Manually VS IDE extension installation ? (GhostDoc extension)

Question

The reason of this question is that I've made a silent installer of VisualStudio 2013 with some extensions and I would like to add the GhostDoc extension to the unatended process, but GhostDoc can't be installed like an VSIX file, it is an MSI installer but it seems that also can't be silent installed like a normal MSI package.

So I've tried this:

1. Normally install GhostDoc (free version)

2. Go to the directory where the plugin has expanded their files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Ide\Extensions\XXXXX to save the files in other place for later.

3. Uninstall GhostDoc

4. Paste the retrieved files again on the same directory of step 2.

But don't worked and I don't know why

I suppose that maybe I should need to do more things like register "X" file using what?, also seems that VS or VSIX generates a random directory name on the extensions directory for each new extension installation (even if the extension is the same all the time).

So how I could manage this? (I'm on VS2013)

PS: GhostDoc only provides support silent installation for the pro version.

Answer 1

DISCLAIMER

The Ghostdoc End User Agreement explicitly states that the free version is for personal use only and therefore does not support silent installations. This limitation is in place so that you're not distributing GhostDoc to every developer in your organisation without paying for the Pro version.

The free version should be downloaded by the individual developer and registered to their email.

That said, if, for pure personal purposes, you want to install GhostDoc Free edition to your machine silently You can take the binaries from a second machine, place them in the right folder and run the setup executable that is installed by the Gostdoc installer. As far as I can tell, this cannot be considered reverse engineering and if you're using it purely for your own personal purposes, then you are not breaking the EULA.

How to do it

Copy the Ghostdoc binaries from your other machine, you can find them here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SubMain\GhostDoc\

In that folder you will find a SubMain.Ghostdoc.Setup.exe, which drops a log file each time you run it. If you open up the log file from a succesfull installation you can get the correct syntax for this executable.

On my machine the log looks like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SubMain\GhostDoc\SubMain.GhostDoc.Setup.exe /action=install /TARGETDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\SubMain\GhostDoc\ /EXTDIR2010=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\\\Extensions\\SubMain\\GhostDoc\\1.0\ /EXTDIR2011=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\\\Extensions\\SubMain\\GhostDoc\\1.0\ /EXTDIR2012=\\Extensions\\SubMain\\GhostDoc\\1.0\ /VS2005= /VS2008= /VS2010= /VS2011=1 /VS2012= /path=C:\Program Files (x86)\SubMain\GhostDoc\SubMain.GhostDoc.Package.dll

note Add " around your paths if they contain spaces.

For normal Vsix extensions you'd just be able to use

^{(for people stumbling onto this question looking to install a normal extension)}

For a normal Visual Studio Extension you can use:

After installing Visual Studio to the machine, you can use the vsixinstaller.exe that lives in the visual studio installation folder to install extensions.

By default vsixinstaller.exe can be found here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE

Call it using /quiet for silent installations. /? for help: