Hi @JohanPetersson, this was a known issue with VS but from what I understand it should have been fixed in 15.4. @Michael-Eng is this correct?

In the meantime, could you try the solution at #1206 (comment) and see if that works for you?

That solution didn't work. Got the same error message, more or less, when running the uninstall command.

2017-11-06 15:22:06 - Unable to find component in product catalog with this ID: Component.GitHub.VisualStudio,version=2.3.1.30
2017-11-06 15:22:06 - System.InvalidOperationException: A value for 'Component' needs to be specified in the catalog.
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionEngineImpl.PerformSetupEngineUnInstall(IInstalledExtension extension, Boolean downgrade)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionEngineImpl.UninstallInternal(IInstalledExtension extension, Boolean forceDelete, Version targetedVSVersion, Boolean downgrade)
   at Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.ExtensionEngineImpl.Uninstall(IInstalledExtension extension, Version targetedVSVersion)
   at VSIXInstaller.InstallProgressPage.UninstallVsix(String vsixId, SupportedVSSKU targetSku, IProgress`1 progress)

Seems like toddhd had the same issue when trying to uninstall the extension.

Could you try this alternate (more complex) solution? #1206 (comment)

@JohanPetersson, could you run http://aka.ms/vscollect and upload the logs somewhere for us to take a look? I suspect it's a known race condition issue when VS Install and VSIXInstaller are run around the same time, and VS Install is overwriting what VSIXInstaller did. But we would need the full logs to confirm.

Same issue on my machine.
I got Component.GitHub.VisualStudio,version=2.3.5.346 installed in my C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages folder but VS still shows 2.2.0.8 as my current version...

Accordingly when I try to deinstall or update it wants to remove a nonexisting extension. Install log:
20.11.2017 08:24:40 - Uninstalling 'GitHub Extension for Visual Studio', version 2.2.0.8.
20.11.2017 08:24:49 - Unable to find component in product catalog with this ID: Component.GitHub.VisualStudio,version=2.2.0.8

And that fails of course. Any ideas? Where is the version number stored?

@JohanPetersson and @helmut-steiner - did trying what @grokys suggested help?

Could you try this alternate (more complex) solution? #1206 (comment)

Finally fixed it. Doing all the steps in the suggested solution made the problem worse (i.e. I couldn't even start VS any more). So I tried just step 3 of the solution and voila it works again.
Step 3:
Delete the extension directory/directories that contain the GitHub extension. Since the GitHub extension installs to a random location, we need to find the folders
• In an elevated command prompt, go to c:\program files (x86)\Microsoft\VisualStudio[Community/Pro/Enterprise]\Common7\IDE\Extensions
• Run “dir /s GitHub” (note that there are asterisks before and after GitHub but they're not being displayed in this thread)
• Delete the directories that contain the GitHub files

The solution in #1206 fixed my problem. Thx

Thank you both for letting us know. We will be working on a better solution to this, but it's good to know what works well in the meantime! :)

I also tried the same solution as @helmut-steiner, i.e. just deleting the extension directories containing GitHub. I then got a warning when launching VS but I was able to re-install latest version of the extension now. Hopefully next update will work as well :)

Thanks for updating us @JohanPetersson, glad you solved the problem. I saw there were quite a few updates to the installer in VS15.5 that came out yesterday, hopefully this will become less of a problem.

I had the same problem with update with community 2019. Version 16.4.6
Then I deleted all github extension subfolders (there was two) at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\IDE\Extensions\GitHub

Then I also deleted that GitHub leaf of that path.
Elevation was needed. Maybe my VC did not start as admin at first place!?
Original error was:
Embedded catalog does not contain a component.
Error went away and I was able to clean install Github extension thanks for your advices and cues.