Cannot install Octopus build steps extension on TFS 2015

We are unable to install the TFS 2015 build extensions on any of our servers. All have Update 2 or higher. We followed the directions here:

and downloaded the extension from here :

https://download.octopusdeploy.com/tfs-2015-extension/octopusdeploy.octopus-deploy-build-release-tasks-2.0.39.vsix

Running the .VSIX gives us the error “The extension manifest is invalid” on machines that don’t have Visual Studio installed. On one machine that has both TFS 2015 and Visual Studio 2015, the error says "The extension is not installable on any currently installed products.

How can we install it?

Hi,

Unfortunately the steps to install to an on-premises TFS server aren’t very straightforward.

You can find instructions for installing extensions to an on-premises TFS instance on this Microsoft documentation page.

Double-clicking a VSIX file on a machine that has Visual Studio results in an attempt to install it as an extension to Visual Studio - not TFS. By reusing the file extension, Microsoft unfortunately made it a bit more difficult!

I hope that helps!

Damian

That worked, thanks. Being able to use the same extension as VSTS and TFS 2017 is extremely important to 2015 users.

Your TFS Marketplace page continues to say that the extension doesn’t work with TFS 2015. It should say it’s compatible with TFS 2015 Update 3. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=octopusdeploy.octopus-deploy-build-release-tasks

And of course the documentation I previously cited needs revision too.

Thanks for the quick response.

Hi,

The page on the marketplace mentions that this version doesn’t work with TFS 2015 on premises. There’s a UI issue with the dropdowns in the build tasks that works correctly in VSTS, but it doesn’t work on 2015 premises - even update 3.

There’s a link to a page that gives an alternative download for an extension that should work correctly. In your initial email, you mentioned you are using that on-prem one, so I’m a little confused…

For 2015 on premises, the marketplace download won’t work, so that message is correct as far as I can tell.