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Supporting Multiple Versions of Visual Studio

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

The term side-by-side means that you can install and maintain multiple versions of a product on the same computer. For VSPackages, that means a user can have several Visual Studio versions installed on the same computer. However, you cannot have side-by-side versions of your VSPackages loaded into a single version of Visual Studio.

Before you make your VSPackage able to be loaded into side-by-side versions of Visual Studio, consider the following:

In This Section

Choosing Between Shared and Versioned VSPackages Explains how to resolve side-by-side issues in your VSPackage.

Registering File Name Extensions for Side-By-Side Deployments Describes how your VSPackage can register file associations in a side-by-side scenario.

Installing VSPackages Discusses how to build and install VSPackages and how to support users who are running multiple versions of Visual Studio at the same time.