Clear MEF Component Cache

What does it do?

This extension clears the MEF cache on disk and lets Visual Studio rebuild it. The reason for clearing the MEF cache is that it can become corrupted. This ususally happens when installing or updating extensions or other Visual Studio components.

Typical errors that can be solved by clearing the component cache are:

• Could not load package exception
• Could not load assembly exception
• Composition error when opening files
• Missing syntax highlighting of some languages in VS

The Visual Studio component cache is located at %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ComponentModelCache. This extension makes it easy to delete that folder so you don't have to remember the location of the cache directory.

Using the extension

In Visual Studio's top menu under Tools, a new command is now visible:

Clicking the Clear MEF Component Cache button will prompt you to confirm and then restart Visual Studio.

Restarting Visual Studio will automatically trigger a reconstruction of the MEF cache. This is a safe operation that doesn't cause any unwanted side effects.

/RootSuffix support

It is unlikely you use the /rootSuffix command line switch and can therefore just ignore this section.

If you use any root suffix when you start Visual Studio, then those will be honored when deleting the cache. This extension will automatically delete the cache belonging to the current root suffix.

Read more about the /RootSuffix command line switch.

License

Apache 2.0