I'm sure this is a common problem, but I can't find much info about it.
I have a work computer, a home computer, a surface, and maybe some Azure VMs that i'd like my visual studio 2013 extensions synced across them. I seem to have to refresh/wipe a computer fairly often, and re-installing all the extensions I like to use is sort of a pain. I initally thought the new VS Profiles would do this, but apparently they only sync themes/general settings.
There used to be an extenstion that apparently did this Extension Sync
But that looks like it's only for VS 2010. There was also a blog post that showed the location that the extensions were saved in.
http://www.larswilhelmsen.com/2012/01/08/syncing-visual-studio-extensions-and-settings-with-dropbox/
Which looked like a perfect solution, except in 2013/2013 the extensions location must have changed, and I cannot find them.
Does anyone know how I could sync my extensions across multiple machines? Or possibly know the location that the Extensions are stored in and if it's possible to change that location to something like Dropbox/Skydrive/Google Drive?
You can turn on Settings Sync using the Turn On Settings Sync... entry in the Manage gear menu at the bottom of the Activity Bar. You will be asked to sign in and what preferences you would like to sync; currently Settings, Keyboard Shortcuts, Extensions, User Snippets, and UI State are supported.
There is a Synchronize Changes action in the Status Bar, next to the branch indicator, when the current checked out branch has an upstream branch configured. Synchronize Changes will pull remote changes down to your local repository and then push local commits to the upstream branch.
The Roaming Extension Manager is a new feature in Visual Studio 2017 and can be seen under the Extensions and Updates dialog box. This allows you to keep a track of all your favorite extensions.
If you've upgraded to Visual Studio 2015 there's a new extension that Microsoft just released for it called the Roaming Extension Manager.
It sounds like this is what you are looking for.
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/7b421a95-c32c-4433-a2be-a41b276013ab?SRC=Home
There's something called the "User State Migration Tool" that is intended for preserving state in corporate PC desktop deployments for wipe-and-load, similar to your Azure scenario.
If you know something about the way the extension settings are saved (as shown in the blog), it's not too hard to construct an XML descriptor and use the deployment tool to apply the settings. The tool is command line so it is easily automated.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825142.aspx
This solution has increasing value when you have more than just Visual Studio to migrate into your VM.
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