cannot install github copilot on visual studio 2022

Question

Like the title says. I cannot install github copilot on visual studio 2022 version 17.4.4 (latest)

i am on a arm64 windows 11 parallels virtual machine on a macbook pro with m1 chip

I cannot find the extension in the "manage extensions" window and when i try to manually install the extension from the website it just fails installing. What am i missing?

Answer 1

Here is another workaround for installing amd64 extensions on VS 2022 for ARM:

1. Dowload the extension
2. Open the .VSIX file with 7ZIP or similar
3. Extract and edit the file extension.vsixmanifest
4. In the file, look for the existing Installation Target

    <InstallationTarget Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" Version="[17.0,18.0)">
      <ProductArchitecture>amd64</ProductArchitecture>
    </InstallationTarget>

5. Add a new installation target, copying and pasting the existing one, but changing the ProductAchitecture to Arm64, respecting the case

    <InstallationTarget Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" Version="[17.0,18.0)">
      <ProductArchitecture>amd64</ProductArchitecture>
    </InstallationTarget>
    <InstallationTarget Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" Version="[17.0,18.0)">
      <ProductArchitecture>Arm64</ProductArchitecture>
    </InstallationTarget>

6. Save the file and put it again in the .VSIX
7. Install the extension by double clicking the file .VSIX

I have done these steps with several extensions and for the moment everything works fine.

Remember that the versions in the Installation Targets must be the same for both Product Architectures.

Answer 2

Solution For Windows ARM

Note: Microsoft doesn't have an official version to Github Copilot for Windows ARM so this tutorial will force installation manually by extracting the extension content.

How this solution works?

We will install another (non copilot) extension into Visual Studio and then after that is installed we will extract the content from the Copilot Extension and put into the previous extension folder (replace the content) so Visual Studio will load it.

Step 1

Make sure you have the latest version of Visual Studio (DON'T USE THE VS PREVIEW VERSION)

Step 2

Press Win+R and go to the folder %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\ there you will see a weird named folder with your VS version, in my case is VS 2022 v17.6.5

If you have multiple VS installed there will be multiple of these folders, consider uninstalling other VS to easily identify which one is the correct.

• Enter the selected folder and you should see the Extensions folder, enter inside that.

If you don't have any extension installed as me, there will be just the default files there:

Step 3

Install some extension first that will be replaced later, now I will install the Copilot Chat which is not what we want but we will use it's folder to place the Copilot extension:

• Close Visual Studio and it will install, after that you should see some new content on the Extensions folder:

Step 4

Download the Copilot Extension .vsix file from the marketplace

• Open the .vsix with 7ZIP or any other tool
• Extract the content to inside EVERY FOLDER in the Extensions folder, in my case I will extract inside the two folders that you see on my step 3. If you did it right the replace prompt will show up, replace it!

Step 5

Open Visual studio and if it worked you should see it on the Installed menu:

Step 6

Add your github account to Visual Studio, BEFORE THIS make sure you have an active subscription or trial to the Copilot service.

• After adding github to your VS, check the logs to find any errors. You might want to restart VS some times to force it reload!

Bonus

Demo on testing it:

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