I tried to edit a project template after exporting it from vs2010 by extracting it and after editing compressing it again.
But after that it won't show up in visual studios new project dialog.
So I tried it again, without the editing. Just extract and compress again. I even used windows zip mechanisms, but still wont work. Only the exported template works fine.
I also tried what's written here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185298.aspx
to no avail.
So is there some magic incantation nobody told me about to get it to work?
Be carefull following Step 7 in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185298.aspx.
DON'T send the whole Folder to a zip file... only the files inside!
Actually, there's a documented way to get VS to populate the template cache folder by just deploying the zipped template to the ProjectTemplates\etc. folder:
<Path to devenv.exe> /installvstemplates
Works on every version of VS since 2005 (and possibly even earlier versions).
There are actually two places where templates are kept. *Templates and *TemplatesCache (where * is Item or Project). You need to update the template in both places. Note, the cache has the templates extracted from the zip file in a subdirectory that has the same name as the zip.