Create C# Project Templates in Visual Studio 2022 (.NET6)

Question

I have VS 2022 with dotnet 6. I want to create custom project templates.

1. How do I package it, so that my peers can just use it in their machine ? (I tried VSIX but I think it does not support dotnet 6 yet)
2. Also, I want to use custom variables. e.g. if I create a project with name XYZ, the controller name should be 'XYZController'. and I want to use this variable value across multiple places within the project.

Answer 1

There is a comprehensive documentation for creating a custom template. Here is the steps for packageing:

A custom template is packed with the dotnet pack command and a .csproj file. Alternatively, NuGet can be used with the nuget pack command along with a .nuspec file. However, NuGet requires the .NET Framework on Windows and Mono on Linux and macOS.

The .csproj file is slightly different from a traditional code-project .csproj file. Note the following settings:

1. The setting is added and set to Template.
2. The setting is added and set to a valid NuGet version number.
3. The setting is added and set to a unique identifier. This identifier is used to uninstall the template pack and is used by NuGet feeds to register your template pack.
4. Generic metadata settings should be set: , , , and .
5. The setting must be set, even though the binary produced by the template process isn't used. In the example below it's set to netstandard2.0.

See this for a working example.