The release of the latest Visual Studio 2017 RC coincided with an update to the .NET Core toolset. This release brings several improvements, including changes to templating, the dotnet net command, and many bug fixes. Microsoft’s Rich Lander has provided an update as to what .NET Core developers can expect to find in .NET Core RC4.
The dotnet new command has been updated to use a new templating engine and some of its commands have been refined. The first thing that should be noted is that by default, the command dotnet new will no longer create it anything. Instead, it dotnet new without arguments lists some explanatory text and available commands.
The new command line parameters include the –o option that can be used to specify a target directory for the project you are going to create, while –f can be used to specify the target framework for that same project. It is also possible to create an empty solution file with or without any project files as a Solution File is one of the provided templates.
The .NET Core team is also working on improving the templating experience with regards to allowing developers to easily create and share custom templates. While this is not part of RC4, interested developers can see what is in store by reviewing the Template Engine repository, and the template layout and structure is described here.
.NET Core Docker images now use the msbuild SDK due, which is an important change to note from the previously announced schedule (originally the switch from project.json to msbuild was going to coincide with VS2017RTM). If you still require compatibility with the project.json based-SDK, look for the following Docker images:
1.1.0-sdk-projectjson1.1.0-sdk-projectjson-nanoserver
Source code, binaries, Docker images, and stand-alone installers are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.