Using NuGet packages in Visual Studio 2012 project templates

September 17, 2012 - hive-memory nuget vs2012 vsix

Anyone creating Visual Studio project templates these days should be using NuGet package references for project dependencies — it saves you having to update your templates every time a dependency changes, and follows a standard & generally accepted binary dependancy approach.

If you're distributing your project template as a VSIX package (strongly recommended) the NuGet docs here specify the preferred approach is to include the .nupkg files within the VSIX, but the instructions specify the addition of a ‘CustomExtension’ element to the .vsixmanifest file that is no longer valid in v2 of the VSIX schema (the default in Visual Studio 2012). I spent a considerable period of time attempting to work out what the v2 equivalent of CustomExtension was, but to cut a long story short, you don’t need to make any changes to the .vsixmanifest — it’s enough to include all of the packages in the VSIX under a ‘Packages’ directory.

Following are the steps I used to create a working 2012 VSIX project template:

  1. Download and install the Visual Studio 2012 SDK, if you haven’t done so already.
  2. Create a solution and add a ‘C# Project Template’ project and a ‘VSIX Project’ project (under ‘Visual C# > Extensibility’). It amuses me no end that there’s a project template project template. I am easily amused though.
  3. Set up your project template the way you want it. I find it easier to create a temporary project, use ‘File > Export Template...’ and then unzip the package and copy the relevant bits across.
  4. Update your .vstemplate with the ‘WizardExtension’ and ‘WizardData’ elements like the following:
<WizardExtension> 
  <Assembly>NuGet.VisualStudio.Interop, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a</Assembly>
  <FullClassName>NuGet.VisualStudio.TemplateWizard</FullClassName>
</WizardExtension>
<WizardData>
  <packages repository="extension" repositoryId="<!-- your VSIX Product Id -->">
  <!-- your NuGet package dependencies go here, eg: -->
  <package id="Moq" version="4.0.10827" />
  <package id="xunit" version="1.9.1" />
  <package id="xunit.extensions" version="1.9.1" />
  </packages>
</WizardData>
  1. Double-click on the source.extension.vsixmanifest to open it in the designer, and add a new Asset. Select ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.ProjectTemplate’ as the type, “a project in the current solution” as the source, and then choose your template project. See this blog post for more info about this approach.
  2. Create a folder under your VSIX project called ‘Packages’ and drag the .nupkg files (referenced in the .vstemplate above) into this folder. Set the Build Type on the files to ‘Content’ and ‘Include in VSIX’ to ‘True’.
  3. Build the solution - it will produce a VSIX that includes the NuGet dependencies. You’re done!

It’s more correct to also add the NuGet Package Manager extension as a dependency to your VSIX, although I don’t usually bother for our internal templates.

One of the great things about VSIX distribution is that you can add multiple project & item templates to a single package as a discrete, easily distributable approach (just add more assets to the vsixmanifest).