Item templates are missing

[srivatsn]

In the latest VS builds, clicking on AddItem doesn't show most item templates. This is with the new installer and maybe some setup authoring regression.

[333fred]

Initial comments:
It appears as though this is something specific to the .NET Core template. If I create a standard Console app and throw a breakpoint in the AbstractAddClassProjectCommand handler, it gets hit (so I know that it's invoking our project system and not old csproj) and the templates show up correctly. I need to dig more into why the templates aren't showing up for .NET Core apps.

[333fred]

I've tracked down why this is occurring. The existing template filtering mechanism that determines what templates to show to a project doesn't understand the difference between .NET Core and .NET Framework. In the filtering process, it only looks at the TFM version number, not the full TFM. The TFM version number for us is 1.0, and the minimum for almost all the preexisting templates is 2.0. Therefore, the templates don't show up. I've tested artificially increasing our version number to 3.0, and that does cause all the missing templates to show up again.

[davkean]

Great work!

Sri and I talked offline, there's a few things that I see are going to need to change with the templates:

1. We should remove the '2.0' from them; it's meaningless. We don't support .NET 1.x templates anyway.
2. They also add references in some cases - in the case of Class.cs it adds System.dll - there's no such dll in .NET Core, it's not even needed for the template in full .NET Framework. We should remove them on a case-by-case basis.
3. In some cases, we won't want them to show up at - in these cases, we should make use of capabilities - to hide them from projects without those capabilities. Make note - in some cases, we'll need to extend the old project system to return these capabilities to make that happen.

[333fred]

It appears that the file we need to edit, at least for the standard templates such as Class, is VS_Install_Root\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Templates.CS.ManagedCore.Resources.en-US.Item..vstman. VS appears to ignore the RequiredVersionNumber field in the actual vstemplate file, even if the RequiredVersionNumber field is entirely absent from the vstman file.

[333fred]

This is a list of all templates showing up when adding a new item in an old csproj:

Category	Template Name	Status	References	Notes
Code	Class	🚧	System
Code	Interface	🚧	System
Code	Code File	🚧	N/A
Data	DataSet	❌	System, System.Data, System.Xml
Data	LinqToSQLObjects_CS	❌	System, System.Data, System.Xml	Does this belong?
Data	Service-based Database	❌	N/A	Not being included
Data	XML File	🚧	N/A
Data	XML Schema	🚧	N/A
Data	XSLT File	🚧	N/A
General	Component Class	❌	System
General	Application Configuration File	❌	N/A
General	Application Manifest File	🚧	N/A
General	Assembly Information File	❌	System
General	Bitmap File	🚧	N/A
General	Code Analysis Rule Set	✔️	N/A
General	Cursor File	❌	N/A
General	Debugger Visualizer	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms, Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers
General	Icon File	🚧	N/A
General	Installer Class	❌	N/A	Not being included
General	Resources File	🚧	N/A
General	Runtime Text Template	❌	N/A
General	Settings File	❌	N/A
General	Text File	🚧	N/A
General	Text Template	❌	N/A
General	Windows Script Host	❌	N/A
General	Windows Service	❌	N/A
General	Directed Graph Document (.dgml)	✔️	N/A
WinForms	Inherited Form	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WinForms	Inherited User Control	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WinForms	Windows Form	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WinForms	About Box	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WinForms	Custom Control	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WinForms	MDI Parent Form	❌	N/A	No WinForms
WPF	User Control (WPF)	❌	N/A	No WPG
SQL	SQL Server Unit Test	❌	N/A

[333fred]

@srivatsn @davkean The ones with ❓, I'm not sure whether we want them to show up or not. Input would be appreciated.

[333fred]

Sri and I talked a bit offline. For now, what we're going to do is remove the min version from the templates here that we'd like to have show up. That'll get us enough filtering for it to everything to appear in preview 5, and then I'll move to higher priority stories for preview 5. Once that's completed, we'll circle back around and implement the capability-based filtering.

[davkean]

@srivatsn Don't agree on the priority - well want to remove the assembly references for at least the common templates such as interface, class, etc so that you don't get an error on adding them.

[srivatsn]

Yes I'm saying we should do the work needed to get the templates we want to show up. I was saying that if we need to introduce capabilities to filter out templates that dont apply to Core (say MDI parent form) let's instead filter for now based on TFM check and do the real work later.

[333fred]

VBProj Templates:

Category	Template Name	Status	References	Notes
Code	Module	🚧	N/A
Code	Interface	🚧	N/A
Code	Component Class	❌	System
Code	Code File	🚧	N/A
Code	COM Class	❌	N/A
Code	Transactional Component	❌	N/A
Data	DataSet	❌	System, System.Data, System.Web.Services, System.Xml
Data	LinqToSQLObjects_VB	❌	System, System.Data, System.Xml	Located in DataDesign
Data	Service-based Database	❌	System, System.Data, System.Xml
Data	XML File	🚧	N/A
Data	XML Schema	🚧	N/A
Data	XML To Schema	✔️	N/A
Data	XSLT File	🚧	N/A
General	Application Configuration File	❌	N/A
General	Application Manifest File	🚧	N/A
General	Bitmap File	🚧	N/A
General	Code Analysis Rule Set	✔️	N/A
General	Cursor	❌	N/A
General	Icon File	🚧	N/A
General	Installer Class	❌	System, System.Configuration.Install
General	Resources File	🚧	N/A
General	Runtime Text Template	❌	N/A
General	Settings File	❌	N/A
General	Text File	🚧	N/A
General	Text Template	❌	N/A
General	Windows Service	❌	N/A
General	Directed Graph Document	✔️
WPF	User Control (WPF)	❌	System, WindowsBase, PresentationCore, PresentationFramework
SQL Server	SQL Server Unit Test	❌	N/A
Windows Forms	Windows Forms	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	User Control	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	About Box	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Custom Control	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Dialog	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Explorer Form	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Login Form	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	MDI Parent Form	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Splash Screen	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms
Windows Forms	Inherited Form	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms	Currently showing up.
Windows Forms	Inherited User Control	❌	System, System.Drawing, System.Windows.Forms	Currently showing up.

[panopticoncentral]

The VS extensibility templates are also not showing up.

[davidwengier]

WPF item templates will be in a future release of 16.1. Windows Forms templates are still in progress.

[hicks86]

Just clarifying, that this is issue is also related to unit test templates not appearing for a .NET Core Unit Test projects (Add new item)?

[davkean]

@hicks86 please file a new bug around what templates you would like to see.

[jmarolf]

Winforms fixed with AD#175581

[tmeschter]

I've done some spot checking, and many of the things that were previously missing are now showing up. I'm going to close this issue in favor of creating new issues for specific missing templates (if any) as they come up.