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Private galleries

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You can share the controls, templates, and tools that you develop by posting them to a private gallery on the intranet for your organization, as follows:

  • Create an Atom (RSS) feed to a suitably configured central location (repository) on your intranet. For more information, see How to: Create an Atom feed for a private gallery.

  • Distribute a .pkgdef file that describes the private gallery. We recommend this configuration for administrators who want to connect a private gallery to many computers at the same time.

When a private gallery is available, you can add it to Extensions and Updates in Visual Studio.

Extension Manager Add Dialog

  1. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Options.

  2. In the Environment node, select Extensions and Updates.

  3. Choose the Add button.

  4. In the Name field, enter a name for the private gallery, for example, My Gallery.

  5. In the URL field, enter the URL of the Atom feed or SharePoint site that is hosting the private gallery.

    1. If the host is an Atom feed that connects to the private gallery, the URL would resemble this one: http://www.mywebsite/mygallery/atom.xml. This URL can refer to a file or a network path.

    2. If the host is a SharePoint site, the URL would resemble this one: http://mysharepoint/sites/mygallery/forms/AllItems.aspx.

Manage private galleries

An administrator can make a private gallery available to several computers at the same time by modifying the system registry on each computer. To accomplish this, create a .pkgdef file that describes the new registry keys and their values. The format of this file is as follows.

[$RootKey$\ExtensionManager\Repositories\{UniqueGUID}]
@={URI}  (REG_SZ)
Disabled=0 | 1 (DWORD)
Priority=0 (highest priority) ... MaxInt (lowest priority) (DWORD) (uint)
Protocol=Atom|Sharepoint (REG_SZ)
DisplayName={DisplayName} (REG_SZ)
DisplayNameResourceID={ID} (REG_SZ)
DisplayNamePackageGuid={GUID} (REG_SZ)

For more information, see How to: Manage a private gallery by using registry settings.

You can search for and install Visual Studio extensions from a private gallery in Extensions and Updates. The following steps use a private gallery named My Gallery.

Extension Manager Installing Private Gallery

  1. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Extensions and Updates.

  2. In the left pane, select Online Extensions, and then select My Gallery.

  3. In the right pane, select an extension, and then choose the Download button.

As new versions of Visual Studio extensions are posted in the private gallery, you can update the extensions that you have installed. The following steps use a private gallery named My Repository.

Extension Manager Private Gallery Update

  1. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Extensions and Updates.

  2. In the left pane, select Updates, and then select My Repository.

  3. In the right pane, select an extension, and then choose the Update button.

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