Instances of Visual Studio with different settings

Question

I want to run two instances of Visual studio having different settings, one having bigger fonts.

How do I do that?

When I run the second instance of vs with

devenv.exe /ResetSettings other.vssettings

that settings affects all running instances of Visual Studio (they seem to poll for changed settings).

Answer 1

You can start Visual Studio with a different "Root Suffix" this will read all the settings from a different registry tree and folder from disk:

devenv.exe /RootSuffix OtherInstanceName

This will give you a new "vanilla" configured Visual Studio instance. Any extensions need to be installed into that instance as well. To install Resharper, use the following steps:

To install to an experimental instance, run the ReSharper unified installer, select the Options button, and enter the name of the instance. The experimental instance does not need to exist before starting the install _{https://www.jetbrains.com/help/resharper/sdk/Extensions/Deployment/LocalInstallation/ExperimentalInstance.html}

In Visual Studio 2017 this became a bit easier. There you can create completely separate instances from the installer.