I have couple of machines which need to rebuild for my new projects – it means I have to install my visual studio for several times, also the add-ins and extensions! That’s really boring, also may miss some extensions until you find out you need it – Although this is not a big issue, I can instantly download it but for me this is just like a BUG – I want to fix it since my daily work is to reduce the manually repeated works – If I cannot automate myself , how should I help the others?

First is to make the requirement clear

1. Collect and save the VS setting and extensions in my source machines.
2. Sync it to target machines
3. Recover the setting/extensions on target machines.

Since this is only a personal solution, I will make the design as simple as possible, also leverage the existing service to implement the functionalities:

1. Visual Studio Extension Manager API to get the extension info include the setting.
2. Live Mesh – live mesh can help to auto sync  the files between different machines.
3. Extension Gallery– Extension should be downloaded from the official gallery.

The design is simple and then I figure out I may need to check the community may have the same idea – then I Bing it!   The result is never out of my expectation! One simple solution is already there which can serve my purpose!

http://dotnetsurfers.com/blog/2011/03/14/extensionsync-a-visual-studio-extension-to-synchronize-other-extensions/ 

The same idea may be existing on the IE/Windows – don’t never ignore these kind of small idea – it may be some startup business!