Visual Studio Extension Debug Issue – Initialize never called

In updating my Parameterization Preview extension this week I had a problem where debugging the extension didn’t work.  Debugging would startup a new instance of Studio with the extension installed but the Initialize method in my Package was never called.  After some searching I couldn’t find any options to fix it or others with the same issue.  I did find some Microsoft documentation with guidance for migrating extensions for VS2017:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/how-to-migrate-extensibility-projects-to-visual-studio-2017

As a member of the Visual Studio Partner Program, I found several resources to get some help but Gitter seemed like a good option.

https://gitter.im/Microsoft/extendvs’’

Sure enough another community member had seen this issue and fixed it by resetting the VS Experimental Instance. 

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I didn’t even know there was an Experimental Instance.  Per Yann’s suggestion I found the reset option in the start menu:

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Make sure all instances of VS are shutdown before executing.  Execution appears as follows:

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This fixed the issue for me.  After this my extension initialized as expected and all was good.

Happy migrating!

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