Yea I had found that as well. But this means that an installation is required not only for the developer system, but also for every system the final application is deployed on. I'd rather have a copy-and-go solution.. To be honest, I think it's silly that microsoft has chosen to change their deployment policy. As far as I know, none of this trouble is needed for a VC++ .NET 2003 project. Just copy the plugin and you're done.

I'm looking into deployment using a private assembly right now but I believe this can't be done with VC++ Express..

BTW, did you test installing the vcredist package and using the plugin? I actually dismissed this solution because I don't like to require the user to install anything just for using a plugin.