Creating .Net Framework Project from Command Line

Question

_{Tuesday, October 23, 2018 4:57 PM}

With .NET core one can easily create a new project with 'dotnet new classlib'. How can I achieve the same for a .NET Framework 4.5 class library project? I looked at some of the tools at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/tools/ but none of them seem to offer an option to create a project (sln + csproj) from the command line. 

As background information, I will have a bunch of projects each one using the same basic code where the final code needs to be inserted. Each of these projects also depends on another project. So I want to just call a batch file that take the new project name as an argument, then creates the project (csproj), adds a .cs template and adds the dependency on that other project.

All replies (3)

_{Wednesday, October 24, 2018 2:22 AM ✅Answered}

Hi hulamula,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

Now, we cannot use the dotnet new command to create a .NET Framework project. For the detail description, please have a look at this similar issue: Using dotnet new for targeting .NET Framework

For your current situation, maybe you can check this: How to: Create project templates. We can create a new project and use the basic code, add reference to another project and some others, then go to Project-Export Template and export this current project as the template, it will default auto add into VS. Go to File-New-Project, you will find this custom project template and choose it, then insert your final code and others.

Best regards,

Sara

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_{Wednesday, October 24, 2018 5:00 AM}

Perhaps you can also imply “T4 Text Templates” into project generation:

·         /en-us/visualstudio/modeling/code-generation-and-t4-text-templates?view=vs-2017

_{Thursday, October 25, 2018 4:03 PM}

Thank you for the feedback. I didn't know about the project templates but decided to take that approach. With some digging around I ended up following the instructions at the following like. It explains how to create a template project ("MyTemplateProj") and then a VSIX project ("MyVSIXProj") to distribute the template.

/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/how-to-use-wizards-with-project-templates?view=vs-2017

I followed these exact steps and run MyVSIXProj in debug mode. When I did go to the VS that started up as part of the debugging session I did see the template. When I ran another debugging session it stopped appearing and I just can't get it back. When I go to the menu Tools->Extensions and Updates I do see MyVSIXProj in there (shouldn't it be MyTemplateProj?) but when I go to File->New->Project I don't see it anywhere under Visual C#. I do see a directory MyVSIXProj in C:\Users\user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_821de0edExp\Extensions\MyName]. If I drill down to the subdirectory [version] I see a vsixmanifest file along with two json files and the subdirectory ProjectTemplates. That directory has subdirectories CSharp/1033/MyTemplateProj with a vstemplate file (and an .ico and .cs file).

So why does my template not show up when creating new projects? Also the path above has that _821de0edExp. Is it because it's a debugging session? If so, why does it not disappear after I am done debugging? Could that be the source of the problem.