[Comment] What dotnet new Could Be

[RehanSaeed]

https://rehansaeed.com/what-dotnet-new-could-be/

[RehanSaeed]

Kathleen Dollard commented on 2019-12-31 18:02:27

Hi! I'm the PM for the CLI/SDK. dotnet new is a very sub-optimal experience for both authors and consumers. For clarity, I am not currently the PM for templating, so I can't offer a roadmap, and these are my thoughts and not official at all. I care a lot about templates and believe they can be the star of the dotnet world as opposed to seeming an afterthought - my ideas parallel yours, so I'll just highlight the differences. The lack of unification between Visual Studio and dotnet new is a real pain point for everyone, it's not easy to fix.

One thing in flight is work on NuGet to support package type search. I've been pushing this for.NET (global) tools, but I believe we will also see this for templates at the same time. This also opens up auto-complete on dotnet new --install. (And yes that syntax is weird).

I would love to build a UI. I have had lots of thoughts on this, but the user experience you describe is very close. I think many people here would love to see this built, so please keep pushing us on it. I think options are important, but just having this way to find templates would be very valuable, particularly if we could manage to get them in real time with versions from both CLI and Visual Studio - we also have a problem keeping some templates up to date.

I think we moved away from restore because it automatically happens after dotnet new. Have you tried that? User benefit from specific post-actions (like .md with help) would be helpful. In my mind, converging the experience between dotnet new and Visual Studio templates is a very high priority, so having post-actions that feel weird in Visual Studio don't seem like a good idea. And we would carefully consider whether running arbitrary templates could be done in a safe manner.

Thank you for the insight on using - I did not see that one.

I've run into the docs issue myself - I know we will only make templates great if we move the authoring experience into the "decent to great" range. It is not there now.

I hope this is just the beginning of a conversation

[RehanSaeed]

Muhammad Rehan Saeed commented on 2019-12-31 18:41:03

Hi! I'm the PM for the CLI/SDK. dotnet new is a very sub-optimal experience for both authors and consumers. For clarity, I am not currently the PM for templating, so I can't offer a roadmap, and these are my thoughts and not official at all. I care a lot about templates and believe they can be the star of the dotnet world as opposed to seeming an afterthought - my ideas parallel yours, so I'll just highlight the differences. The lack of unification between Visual Studio and dotnet new is a real pain point for everyone, it's not easy to fix.

One thing in flight is work on NuGet to support package type search. I've been pushing this for.NET (global) tools, but I believe we will also see this for templates at the same time. This also opens up auto-complete on dotnet new --install. (And yes that syntax is weird).

I would love to build a UI. I have had lots of thoughts on this, but the user experience you describe is very close. I think many people here would love to see this built, so please keep pushing us on it. I think options are important, but just having this way to find templates would be very valuable, particularly if we could manage to get them in real time with versions from both CLI and Visual Studio - we also have a problem keeping some templates up to date.

I think we moved away from restore because it automatically happens after dotnet new. Have you tried that? User benefit from specific post-actions (like .md with help) would be helpful. In my mind, converging the experience between dotnet new and Visual Studio templates is a very high priority, so having post-actions that feel weird in Visual Studio don't seem like a good idea. And we would carefully consider whether running arbitrary templates could be done in a safe manner.

Thank you for the insight on using - I did not see that one.

I've run into the docs issue myself - I know we will only make templates great if we move the authoring experience into the "decent to great" range. It is not there now.

I hope this is just the beginning of a conversation

Thanks Kathleen! You need to introduction.

Great to hear that someone else at Microsoft who is closer to the action has similar thoughts to me.

[RehanSaeed]

Theo Albers commented on 2019-12-31 21:46:59

It would already be a step forward if VS uses "dotnet new" behind the scenes for dotnet core projects. By doing so, you can easily identify the missing bits in dotnet templates to shine in a VS gui environment.