How to install a Visual Studio extension with templates via an MSI
The original story around VSIX deployment via an MSI was that simply copying it to the %VSInstallDir%\Common7\Ide\Extensions\Your Company\Your Product\Version was enough. But alas, devil is in the details, and a fairly complex matrix of supported and unsupported features depending on the deployment style is also available on MSDN.
However, whenever templates are involved, the general advise from Microsoft was to just run devenv /setup at the end of your MSI installation. This might have been fine when you were only targeting VS2010, but now with 2010, 2012 and 2013 potentially installed on the machine, running devenv /setup three times in a row can take a LOOONG time (we’re talking several minutes here). And this was unavoidable if you are deploying your templates to Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates or Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates....