Florian Winkelbauer

Creating VSIX Chocolatey Packages

This post outlines how to create a Chocolatey package for a VSIX file based on the Cake for Visual Studio extension.

We will start with the package definition:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2015/06/nuspec.xsd">
  <metadata>
    <id>my.vs2017.cake</id>
    <title>Visual Studio 2017 Cake Extension</title>
    <version>0.2.0.0</version>
    <authors>Cake Build</authors>
    <owners>Florian Winkelbauer</owners>
    <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
    <description>Adds the Cake extension to Visual Studio 2017</description>
    <copyright>Copyright 2018</copyright>
    <tags>cake visual studio 2017</tags>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency id="chocolatey-visualstudio.extension" />
    </dependencies>
  </metadata>
</package>

Notice the declared dependency chocolatey-visualstudio.extension which allows us to install a VSIX file using PowerShell.

To create the install/uninstall scripts we will need the following information:

I have created a small helper function to fetch the above data. This function requires the checksum package to be installed:

function Get-VsixData {
    param($url, $checksumType)

    $page = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url

    $vsixId = ($page.AllElements |
        Where Class -eq 'vsixId' |
        Select -ExpandProperty innerHTML).Trim() -replace '"', ''

    $json = $page.AllElements |
        Where Class -eq 'vss-extension' |
        Select -ExpandProperty innerHtml |
        ConvertFrom-Json |
        Select -ExpandProperty versions

    $vsixVersion = $json.version

    $vsixUrl = $json.files |
        where assetType -match '\.vsix$' |
        Select -ExpandProperty source

    $file = Join-Path $env:TMP 'tmp.vsix'
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $vsixUrl -OutFile $file
    $checksum = checksum -f="$file" -t="$checksumType"
    Remove-Item $file

    return @{ VsixId = $vsixId; VsixVersion = $vsixVersion; VsixUrl = $vsixUrl; Checksum = $checksum; ChecksumType = $checksumType }
}

Here’s the console output for the Cake extension:

Get-VsixData 'https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vs-publisher-1392591.CakeforVisualStudio' 'sha256'

Name                           Value
----                           -----
VsixId                         3cf9b016-d63f-44ee-849d-6f3efc996134
VsixVersion                    0.2.0.0
VsixUrl                        https://vs-publisher-1392591.gallerycdn.vsassets.io/extensions/vs-publisher-1392591/cakeforvisualstudio/0.2.0.0/1503436806448/229353/4/Cake.VisualStudio.vsix
Checksum                       752A01E2A40A5DED7BED6FC16930B347205030AE693C75D3D5DC76DCCE407D02
ChecksumType                   sha256

With this information we now can create our install logic:

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

$parameters = @{
    PackageName   =  $env:ChocolateyPackageName
    VsixUrl       = 'https://vs-publisher-1392591.gallerycdn.vsassets.io/extensions/vs-publisher-1392591/cakeforvisualstudio/0.2.0.0/1503436806448/229353/4/Cake.VisualStudio.vsix'
    Checksum      = '752A01E2A40A5DED7BED6FC16930B347205030AE693C75D3D5DC76DCCE407D02'
    ChecksumType  = 'sha256'
}

Install-VisualStudioVsixExtension @parameters

And the uninstall logic:

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'

$parameters = @{
    PackageName   = $env:ChocolateyPackageName
    VsixId        = '3cf9b016-d63f-44ee-849d-6f3efc996134'
}

Uninstall-VisualStudioVsixExtension @parameters

Our final package should now look like this.

Creating and updating several VSIX packages could be further automated using the above helper function in combination with tools such as the Chocolatey Auto Updater (AU).