{"id":2383,"date":"2010-03-04T10:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T10:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/2010\/03\/04\/creating-and-sharing-project-item-templates\/"},"modified":"2022-10-17T11:45:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T18:45:51","slug":"creating-and-sharing-project-item-templates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/creating-and-sharing-project-item-templates\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating and Sharing Project & Item Templates"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the great new features we added in Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to easily find and consume online Project and Item templates without leaving the New Project\/Item dialog. What may not be so obvious is how to go from a piece of code you want to share to a template contained in a VSIX file that can be uploaded to the Visual Studio Gallery<\/a> or shared with others in your organization.<\/p>\n

This post describes two ways (one quick and simple, the other for more complex situations) to create a VSIX file that contains your shareable code templates.<\/p>\n

Quick, (mostly) Automatic Way: Export Template as VSIX<\/h2>\n

In a series of posts on Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a>, Part 3<\/a>, Addendum<\/a>), Pedro Silva walked through the process of using the standard Export Template wizard that has shipped in Visual Studio for several releases in combination with the VSIX Explorer tool<\/a> or the VSIX Project template<\/a> in the Visual Studio SDK to package up your template. While this does the job, it seemed like a few too many steps for something that should be straightforward.<\/p>\n

To make this process much simpler, we recently published a new Export Template as VSIX wizard<\/a><\/b> that will guide you through the process of turning an existing project into a VSIX file containing your template. After downloading the Export Template as VSIX wizard<\/a> from the Visual Studio Gallery website or the Extension Manager dialog, you will find a new option on the File menu in Visual Studio 2010 for \u201cExport Template as VSIX\u2026\u201d. This will bring up the Export Template as VSIX Wizard, which will allow you to configure options for both the template and the VSIX file that will contain it.<\/p>\n

Longer, (mostly) Manual Way: Template Project + VSIX Project<\/h2>\n

While this is the ideal way to quickly share some starter code with others, it is not ideal for all<\/i> situations where you\u2019re creating a template. For example, you may be building a series of templates in conjunction with a VSPackage or editor extension. What if you are making frequent changes to the template files? What if you wish to keep the template source files in a version control system? What if you need to make a customization to the templates or the VSIX container not permitted by the Export Template as VSIX wizard?<\/p>\n

This is where the Visual Studio SDK comes in to help. In the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 SDK<\/a>, we\u2019ve included project templates for building project and item templates. (Yes, we\u2019ve created templates for templates.) If you go to the Extensibility<\/b> node under Visual C#<\/b> or Visual Basic<\/b> in the New Project<\/b> dialog, you\u2019ll find two new templates (for either a project template or an item template). Let\u2019s walk through the process of creating and packaging a C# Project template using these new templates in the Visual Studio SDK.<\/p>\n

Walkthrough: Packaging a template with the Visual Studio SDK<\/h3>\n

First, we’ll create a project template project\u00a0which generates a zip file for a single template. Then, we’ll create a VSIX project to contain and deploy the generated project template.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n
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  1. Open the New Project dialog to create a new \u201cC# Project Template\u201d from the Extensibility category called \u201cMyTemplate\u201d. There are a few interesting things to note about the generated project:\n