Making QuickCode.NET 2010 work in Visual Studio 2012 and 2013

Update July 21st, 2015 - No more, alas. Visual Studio 2015 doesn't support add-ins anymore, so this trick will not work for version 14.0 - Visual Studio 2015. An end to an era, but that's life...

It's a tribute to the level of compatibility of the Visual Studio addin-model that QuickCode.NET 2010 is compatible with Visual Studio 2012. The binaries are all compatible, it's just the configuration of the add-in that needs to change.

To get QuickCode.NET 2010 to work in Visual Studio 2012 or 2013, all you have to do is change the contents of an XML file, located in

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\AddIns

(Press Windows+R, then paste the line above, then press Enter)

Edit the file QuickCode2010.AddIn (you'll need Administrator privileges) and add a new HostApplication element under the list already there:

<HostApplication>
  <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
  <Version>10.0</Version>
</HostApplication>
<HostApplication>
  <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
  <Version>11.0</Version>
</HostApplication>

The last four lines are new - Visual Studio 2012 has version number 11.0. If you add another four lines for version 12.0, QuickCode.NET will work just fine in Visual Studio 2013 as well. This should probably work for Visual Studio 2015, too, with version number 14.0. (This sadly doesn't work for Visual Studio 2015 anymore, as it doesn't support add-ins anymore.)

Then simply (re)start Visual Studio 2012/2013 and QuickCode.NET 2010 is at your disposal once again!

For the sceptical, here's proof ;-)

QuickCode.NET 2010 running in Visual Studio 2012