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Troubleshooting template installation

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If you run into problems deploying your project or item templates, you can enable diagnostic logging.

  1. Create a pkgdef file in the Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions folder for your installation. For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\EnablePkgDefLogging.pkgdef.

  2. Add the following to the pkgdef file:

    [$RootKey$\VsTemplate]
"EnableTemplateDiscoveryLog"=dword:00000001

  3. Open a Developer Command Prompt for your installation and run devenv /updateConfiguration.

  4. Open Visual Studio and launch the Create a new project and New Item dialog boxes to initialize both template trees.

    The template log now appears in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_[instanceid]\VsTemplateDiagnosticsList.csv (instanceid corresponds to the installation ID of your instance of Visual Studio). Each template tree initialization appends entries to this log.

The log file contains the following columns:

  • FullPathToTemplate, which has the following values:

    • 1 for manifest-based deployment

    • 0 for disk-based deployment

  • TemplateFileName

  • Other template properties

Note

To disable logging, either remove the pkgdef file, or change the value of EnableTemplateDiscoveryLog to dword:00000000, and then run devenv /updateConfiguration again.

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