Hide template visibility depending on VS version?

Question

I have created a VSIX with 2 templates, one is for VS2012 and another is for VS2013.

But if I use the VSIX, both templates are visible for both VS versions in "New Project" window. I want to restrict it. Is there any way?

Answer 1

This is not a great solution, but only one I've found for this problem.

You can register your package to initialize early on in the Visual Studio startup with the following attribute.

[ProvideAutoLoad(UIContextGuids80.NoSolution)]
public sealed YourPackage : Package

Then in your override void Initialize() method you'll want to register a new DTEEvent.

DTEEvents dte_events;
private void RegisterStartupEvents()
{
    if(dte == null)
        dte = (DTE)GetService(typeof(DTE));


    if (dte != null)
    {
        dte_events = dte.Events.DTEEvents;
        dte_events.OnStartupComplete += OnStartupComplete;
    }
}

The OnStartupComplete will fire on startup before any templates have been initialized. To remove them from the list for the current VS version, the bundled zip template files that are copied when your VSIX package is installed will have to be deleted. This method could probably be nicer, but you get the idea.

private void OnStartupComplete()
{
    dte_events.OnStartupComplete -= OnStartupComplete;
    dte_events = null;
    var cleanupList = TemplateCleanupByVsVersion[MajorVisualStudioVersion];
    foreach (var deleteTemplate in cleanupList)
    {
        DirectoryInfo localVsDir = new DirectoryInfo(UserLocalDataPath);
        // Locate root path of your extension installation directory.
        var packageDllFileInfo = localVsDir.GetFiles("MyVsPackage.dll", SearchOption.AllDirectories)[0];
        DirectoryInfo extensionDirInfo = packageDllFileInfo.Directory;
        if (extensionDirInfo == null)
        {
            // Failed to locate extension install directory, bail.
            return;
        }
        var files = extensionDirInfo.GetFiles(deleteTemplate + ".zip", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
        if (files.Length > 0)
        {
            File.Delete(files[0].FullName);
        }
    }
    ServiceProvider.GetWritableSettingsStore().SetPackageReady(true);
}

TemplateCleanupByVsVersion is a Dictionart<int,List<string>> that maps Visual Studio Major version with a list of zip file names (without extension) that you don't want showing up in the mapped Visual Studio version. Eg,

public readonly Dictionary<int, List<string>> TemplateCleanupByVsVersion = new Dictionary<int, List<string>>
        {
            {11,new List<string> { "MyTemplate1.csharp", "MyTemplate2.csharp", "MyTemplate3.csharp" } },
            {12,new List<string> { "MyTemplate1.csharp" }},
            {14,new List<string>()}
        };

MajorVisualStudioVersion comes from parsing dte.Version. eg,

public int MajorVisualStudioVersion => int.Parse(dte.Version.Substring(0, 2));

The result being specific Visual Studio versions can remove any templates from your VSIX that don't work well. Hope that helps.