This was working fine until I tried cleaning my experimental instance (all extensions in development were building and running in the experimental instance). I followed the really badly written guide here to do so:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/creating-an-extension-with-a-menu-command?view=vs-2022#clean-up-the-experimental-environment

and ended up just deleting the temp Experimental folder 17.9.5Exp (my vs version). I’m sure that was a mistake. However if I run the cmd form the link above, it creates another instance of the folder with some boilerplate code inside.

However, if I try and build a new extension to the test environment, I get:

>C:Users[userdir].nugetpackagesmicrosoft.vssdk.buildtools17.9.3168toolsVSSDKMicrosoft.VsSDK.targets(968,5): error VSSDK1031: Extension 'VisGit.02a4d901-231e-4869-931f-3579c929c996' could not be found. Please make sure the extension has been installed.

Furthermore, nothing is building to the C:UsersstigzAppDataLocalMicrosoftVisualStudio17.9.5Exp folder.

I’ve tried the usual – deleting obj, bin and vs folders – doesn’t help. Also restored original folder from recycle bin – no joy. As it stands – extension development is now over!! May need a reset of the extension dev environment, but not sure how to do that. Would rather avoid full reset of the full VS environment.

Also tried the SO link here. Interstingly that reset what seemed to be an older version than my presenet (17.95):

C:Users[user folder]AppDataLocalMicrosoftVisualStudio16.0_1467c36dExpExtensionsExtensions-16.0_1467c36d.

Totally stuck – any ideas? Really frustrating!