Visual Studio Add-in no longer allows me to debug it

Question

My visual studio addin project will not longer build and run in the debugger. I get the following error message when I try to run it:

A project with an Output Type of CLass Library cannot be stared directly.

It was working about 5 months ago just fine but I opened it and and ran it for the first time since then and get this message. It used to startup another instance of Visual Studio with the addin installed via a proxy addin file.

How do I configure the project or solution to make it behave this way again? Do I need to manually tweak the project of solution file?

Do you have another project in the solution that is a Class Library? Then you should set your addin project as startup Project(right click on it). — Tim Schmelter, Dec 15 '10 at 22:46
There are two other projects but the addin project is set as the startup project. — Tim Santeford, Dec 15 '10 at 22:50

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 15 '10 at 23:11

I figured it out. Some how Visual studio lost the Start External Program and the Command line arguments setting values.

Start External Program needs to be set to:

[Visual Studio path]\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

And the Command line argument should be:

/resetaddin [Name of addin].connect

alt text

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 21 '13 at 16:47

Update for Visual Studio 2012

In Visual Studio 2012, the settings for a new package project are somewhat different.

Start External Program needs to be set to:

[Visual Studio path]\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

And the Command line argument should be:

/rootsuffix Exp

Visual Studio Add-in no longer allows me to debug it

2 Answers2