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A while ago I developed a custom TFS check-in policy that was working fine with Visual Studio 2015. Now I installed Visual Studio 2017 and wanted to register the check-in policy assembly the same way as I did with VS2015 before. But this does not work. How can I register custom check-in policy assemblies with VS2017?

For VS2015, I had these registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies]
"MyCheckInPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\My\\MyCheckInPolicy.dll"

and

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies]
"MyCheckInPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\My\\MyCheckInPolicy.dll"

and accordingly I added those keys for VS2017 (15.0):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies]
"MyCheckInPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\My\\MyCheckInPolicy.dll"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_Config\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies]
"MyCheckInPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\My\\MyCheckInPolicy.dll"

But unfortunately this does not work:

  • If I open the Team Project SourceControl settings, go to the "Check-in Policy" tab and try to Add... a policy, MyCheckInPolicy does not appear1
  • If I open the team project that uses this check-in policy already and do the above, I got an error message telling me that the assembly (mycheckinpolicy) "has not been registered".

Of course I restarted the IDE after the registry change, but even rebooting my machine did not help.

The information I found so far seems to suggest that check-in policies now have to be part of an extension (vsix), which I don't want to believe.

I guess that the problem comes from some references that cannot be resolved when the assembly is loaded into the IDE.

The MyCheckInPolicy project references the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll v14.0 from the VS2015 folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer.
I tried to reference the respective dll from the VS2017 folders, but then the assembly does not work in both IDEs.

I also tried to use the Nuget package "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.All" v12.0.30723.2 instead and deployed all files from the output directory (which seem to contain all assemblies of the package) to the location mentioned in the registry keys. This had the same result: the policy cannot be loaded in neither VS2015 nor VS2017.

We are using TFS 12.0.30723.0.

1So it seems VS2017 doesn't even try to load the assembly and does not care about the registry keys?

René Vogt
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2 Answers2

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In Visual Studio 2017 there are breaking changes to extensibility. Much of the registry configuration has been moved into a "private" registry:

To reduce the impact on the registry, Visual Studio now uses the RegLoadAppKey function to store registry keys in a private binary file under %VsAppDataFolder%\privateregistry.bin. Only a very small number of Visual Studio-specific keys remain in the system registry. (link)

By defining the registry keys as part of a .pkgdef file in a vsix, on installation VS 2017 will (I assume) write the keys to the private registry as opposed to the actual registry, which was the case in previous versions of VS. This will allow the policy to be picked up.

So, here are the steps I went through to get our policies working in VS 2017:

  1. Install the Visual Studio SDK (can be done by modifying your installation if you didn't select the workload originally).
  2. Add a new VSIX Project to your checkin policy solution

  3. Add a .pkgdef file to the VSIX project with the following (this is the registry key entry):

    [$RootKey$\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies] "YourPolicy"="$PackageFolder$\YourPolicy.dll"

  4. Modify source.extension.vsixmanifest (using the GUI wizard) in the VSIX project:

    1. Install Targets: Add your lowest supported VS Version:
      • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community [15.0,16.0)
      • Microsoft.VisualStudio.IntegratedShell [15.0,16.0)
    2. Assets:
      • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Assembly
        • A Project in current solution
        • Project: Select your checkin policy project
      • Microsoft.VisualStudio.VsPackage
        • File on filesystem
        • Path: Select your .pkgdef file from step 3.
    3. Prerequisites: Visual Studio core editor [15.0,16.0)
  5. Build the VSIX project and distribute/install the generated vsix

This GitHub repo was helpful for piecing everything together. Some quirks I found when migrating to the vsix:

  1. By default, vsix installations are now per-user. If you operate VS under multiple users on the same machine you will need to install it for each. There is an option in the vsixmanifest to have the extension installed for all users, but this requires elevation.
  2. Our checkin policy used an app.config file, which is not supported in a vsix. I had to migrate our settings to a .settings file.
Community
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Pero P.
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    Thank you soo much! I still had to change the referenced dll to the VS2017 version (don't know why the nuget package way don't work), but your brilliant explanation worked perfectly! I have some more problems with VS2017 like custom editors for tfs build definitions...but those are questions for another day...Thanks again. – René Vogt Mar 21 '17 at 17:19
  • No problem, glad to help. I just had to go through the pain of working this out yesterday as there is nothing out there. – Pero P. Mar 21 '17 at 17:21
  • I tried creating a new check in policy following your steps (thanks for that!), but I can't find my policy in Visual Studio. What I want is a simple policy that checks for a certain word in all pending changes files and if that word is present the check in should fail. Maybe it's already possible with standard tools? Thanks in advance ! – Lumo Mar 23 '17 at 16:10
  • @Lumo Is your checkin policy using TFS/VS 2017 references (version 15.0.0.0)? – Pero P. Mar 24 '17 at 16:25
  • I just added the NuGet Package "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.All", the only version selectable is 12.0.30723.2. We're using TFS 2015 (Version 14.95.25229.0). – Lumo Mar 27 '17 at 07:43
  • Thanks @PeroP.It seems it is the way to fix that but I created WSIX installer with your steps. But the only problem is it is not showing my policy in policy list.The strange thing is I made a mistake in 3rd step I wrote the *.dll wrong it was showing my policy in the list but that time it was showing assembly error at the bottom. Do you know the issue? – Doniyor Niazov Jun 22 '17 at 10:33
  • Thank you so much for answering. Yet by following your guidelines step by step, I still can't see my policy in the list of policies to be added. – Saeed Neamati Aug 06 '17 at 02:40
  • I could successfully install the extension, but I don't see the Check-in Policy under "Team Explorer - Settings - Source Control - Check-in Policy - Add". Is there a solution for this problem? – Martin Schagerl Nov 30 '17 at 06:41
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It worked to me adding this key to HKCU:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies

Hope it helps. Thanks, Wilsade

Wilsade
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