I need to understand exactly what steps are taken to register an add-in so
that it is visible and successfully loads in Whidbey. In VS 2003, there were
a number of entries made to the registry for COM interop and for making the
add-in visible to the IDE. In VS 2005, it seems the registry modifications
for COM interop are still made, but there does not seem to be any
corresponding changes for making the add-in visible to the IDE. Instead,
there is a .Addin XML file which is placed in C:\Documents and
Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\Addins. I can make
my add-in, which I have created without the wizard, visible to Whidbey, but
it can never successfully load. I always get error #80070002, "The system
cannot find the file specified", even though the <Assembly> node in my
.Addin file is pointing to the DLL on disk. I have tried doing a regasm on
this DLL, which completes successfully, but my add-in still cannot load. On
the other hand, when I use the wizard, my add-in loads correctly. So what is
the wizard doing that I am not?