How to "install" a dotnet core 2.2 custom template in Visual Studio

Question

I have created a custom dotnet core project template following the documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/custom-templates

I can install this template, and create new projects from it, on the command line using dotnet new -i ...\\mycustomtemplate and dotnet new mycustomtemplate , respectively.

Now I would like to make this template available in Visual Studio (2017)'s new project wizard but I cannot find any documentation on how to do that.

Visual Studio help only contains info about creating "Visual Studio project templates", which use a completely different configuration than the dotnet core templates, and also would not work with the dotnet core cli, as far as I understand.

Could anyone give a hint where I could find some documentation how to "install" a dotnet core custom template in Visual Studio? I would really like to have a single template that works with both Visual Studio, Jetbrains Rider and the dotnet core cli.

Or is this simply not possible?

Answer 1

With all credits to @willwolfram18 :

1. You have a working custom template in the NuGet package.
2. Add vs-2017.3.host.json file to .template.config/ .
3. Add Framework symbol to template.json .
4. Place the .nupkg file(s) into the root of a VSIX extension project and make sure to set the "Include in VSIX" flag to True .

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The detailed original answer and the working prototype .