Using Templify and NuGet to automate and share Visual Studio Solution creation

Friday, January 07, 2011

Using Templify and NuGet to automate and share Visual Studio Solution creation

Maarten Balliauw {blog} - Tools for the lazy: Templify and NuGet

“In this blog post, I will cover two interesting tools that, when combined, can bring great value and speed at the beginning of any new software project that has to meet standards that are to be re-used for every project. The tools? Templify and NuGet.

You know the drill. Starting off with a new project usually consists of boring, repetitive tasks, often enforced by (good!) practices defined by the company you work for (or by yourself for that company). To give you an example of a project I’ve recently done:

Create a new ASP.NET MVC application in Visual Studio

Add 2 new projects: <project>.ViewModels and <project>.Controllers

Do some juggling by moving classes into the right project and setting up the correct references between these projects

Maybe you are planning to use jQuery UI?

Add the required JavaScript and CSS files to the project.

Oh right and what was that class you needed to work with MEF inside ASP.NET MVC? Let’s add that one as well:

Add the class for that

Add a reference to System.ComponentModel.Composition to the project

Admit it: these tasks are boring, time consuming and boring. Oh and time consuming. And boring. What if there were tools to automate a lot of this? And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT! Meet Templify and NuGet

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