Solution template - making sure solution-level items exist in same folder as .sln

[Capsup]

I have a multi-project solution template and with the recent change to 16.10, I can now use solution-type templates and they work great in the .NET CLI.
However, in a Visual Studio host, I run into an issue if the user selects not to have the solution and project file be in the same location, in the Visual Studio creation dialog, because VS generates a new solution file at a folder level above whatever the template specifies.

I have a .editorconfig and nuget.config files that needs to be alongside the .sln to be loaded, but if the above option is chosen, then those files will end up being created in the child folder. If I select the above option, then it works just like it does with the CLI.

Is there any way for me to output those files in the correct location, depending on whatever the user selects in that dialog?

My template.json can be found here

[RehanSaeed]

I have the same problem, it would be nice to be able to disable that checkbox.

[sayedihashimi]

@phenning any ideas?

[phenning]

I just dug around the code for the IDE and noticed there doesn't seem to be anyway to supress the checkbox option from being displayed, even from vstemplate based templates.

We can however detect if that option was checked from within our provider and potentially change behavior based on it.

I'm thinking to get the desired behavior we could have the template specify something in the host file which would do the following regardless of whether the checkbox was checked. If the checkbox was checked, we would not have a change in the current behavior, but if unchecked, we would use the solution file as the project output path and cleanup the generated project folder.

If we would implement this, you would need to explicitly specify the sln file as a primary output, since the IDE created sln would be in the same folder.

Alternatively, we could automatically opt into the above behavior for solution templates. I think in most cases this would be a safe thing to do. If we do that, the host option would opt the template out of this default behavior.

In any case, I think we should only have the new behavior when the template was created as a new Solution, and not via added to an existing solution.

Thoughts?

[Capsup]

I'm thinking to get the desired behavior we could have the template specify something in the host file which would do the following regardless of whether the checkbox was checked. If the checkbox was checked, we would not have a change in the current behavior, but if unchecked, we would use the solution file as the project output path and cleanup the generated project folder.

For me, it is not important to suppress that dialog, I think it serves an actual purpose. The most important for me is to have the option of interacting with this primary output solution. Currently, if that is unchecked, there is a folder generated inside the target path, wherein there is a new folder, along with the solution file. Then inside this extra new folder, is the contents of my solution template, except for the actual solution. So if my target path in the dialog is C:\source and name is Foo, I get a folder like:

• C:\source\Foo
• C:\source\Foo\Foo.sln
• C:\source\Foo\Foo\
• C:\source\Foo\Foo\template files including Foo project

And inside this second Foo folder is my actual solution items.
In the above solution, how would the final folder structure be? Would that additional Foo folder then not be used, and instead, the solution file will be moved into C:\source\Foo\Foo\Foo.sln?

If that's the case, that works for me.

The alternative I see, is to somehow, in the template, specify that I need these additional primary output files, which must be placed alongside whereever the generated .sln ends up.

Or just altogether not have that additional output folder.

[phenning]

I think what we would do for new solution projects only (IsExclusive = true) - not new projects being added to an existing solution we would just always treat this option as being checked by default. This would result in:

c:\source\Foo\Foo.sln (generated by VS)
c:\source\Foo\your outputs here - note that you would want to make sure that your generated sln does not exactly match the sourceName defined in Template.json or else it would overwrite the VS generated file and VS would display a prompt on reloading.

For (isExclusive = false) - we should preserve the existing behavior. In this case the project directory is created under the current sln location and all project output is made there. We should add some sort of property that is passed to the template in this case so that you could suppress certain output files here. In this case, I don't think we should allow the template to modify any files outside its project folder, as we wouldn't want arbitrary files which are not part of the project from being overwritten. It would not be desirable for example for a template which was added to an existing solution to overwrite a preexisting nuget.config.

[sayedihashimi]

@phenning if I understand correct, the issue occurs when sourceName and the file name for the solution file matches exactly (minus the extension). Seems like we should add a warning to the analyzer to detect and warn in this case, is that correct?

[RehanSaeed]

Looks like the checkbox is still there in VS 2022, although now it doesn't seem to have any effect whether you check or uncheck it. Any updates on whether we can remove it in future?

[sayedihashimi]

This has been in VS for a long time, and is used by most of the other project types. I don't think it will be removed all up.

@phenning should we ask NPD team to see if we can hide this checkbox?

[phenning]

I’ll follow up and see if there is a way we can hide it by passing some metadata.

[sayedihashimi]

Thanks.

[h3rmanj]

The checkbox still makes a difference for me on VS22 & .NET 6. Is it not supposed to?

[phenning]

We don’t have a way to hide the checkbox, but files should be getting to where they should be regardless of the setting, you just need to make sure that projects are deployed to a sub folder if you want to have solution level items that apply to multiple projects on your solution template.

…

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[h3rmanj]

My solution template looks like this:

├── project
│   └── project.csproj
├── README.md
└── solution.sln

With it checked it has the expected output.
Without it checked it still becomes:

├── project
│   ├── project
│   │   └── project.csproj
│   └── README.md
└── solution.sln

Or did I misunderstand the earlier conversation about the checkbox having no effect?