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....