Fix: VSIX installer error – SignatureDescription could not be created

This is my answer at:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31552082/vsix-installer-signaturedescription-could-not-be-created-for-the-signature-algo/

to the question on why some extensions fail to install at RC (Release Candidate) versions of Visual Studio 2015, showing error “SignatureDescription could not be created for the signature algorithm supplied”.

Not sure if Microsoft fixed this on purpose or by accident, but this is very useful for people who don’t have the time (and courage) to uninstall the RC version and reinstall the final one and all extensions they were using.

Speaking of reinstalling everything by hand, it would be nice if you could export an XML document containing a list of installed Visual Studio extensions and then be able to reimport it to install them all at an other Visual Studio installation (should also be able to edit that XML document to remove some if you wish, or at export see a checkbox list to deselect ones you don’t want exported in the resulting list).

To keep it short, the answer is:

Try installing http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=619615 (found from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2015/07/29/building-apps-for-windows-10-with-visual-studio-2015.aspx)

I used Custom installation option and selected everything. It upgraded Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise RC to Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise automatically and now those extensions that had started recently to not install, are installing fine. That way you’ll avoid the trouble of reinstalling everything.

Note that after installation finishes it shows a button to Launch Visual Studio, which will launch the Enterprise edition (or Professional in the case I guess one had Professional RC installed). However your Windows taskbar shortcuts for Visual Studio 2015 and Blend 2015 will be now broken and you have to fix them by right-clicking them and selecting Properties, then setting them to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\blend.exe respectively, assuming you use an 64-bit OS – else remove the “ (x86)” part – and had installed Visual Studio on C: disk. You may wish to also add those links to the Start menu, under the respective folder (named Visual Studio 2015) if you also miss them from there.