Templates - Dotnet

A starting point for new .NET projects, based on opinionated rules.

Getting started

1. In order to be able to update your repository with the latest changes, you can use the following command after creating your repo:

git remote add template https://github.com/Cognify-App/templates-dotnet
git fetch --all
git merge template/main --allow-unrelated-histories

1. Do this as soon as possible, as the unrelated histories flag will lead to a few conflicts that you will need to resolve manually.
2. Afterwards, you can pull future changes using

   git pull template main
   

3. Rename the solution and project files, replacing 'Solution' to match your project name.
   1. Solution.slnx
   2. Solution.sln.DotSettings
   3. Solution.code-workspace

Features

Apart from a robust configuration, this template specifically includes:

• Git history to semantic versioning integration using GitVersion
• Artifacts layout, to avoid bin/obj folders all over the place. These are placed in the artifacts folder at the solution level, and are further organized by project and configuration. Can also be overridden either at the project level or by a Directory.Build.props above the repository root to redirect them to a different location.
• Central package management, to avoid version conflicts and make it easier to update dependencies.
• Additional targets that enable change log generated from git history, and SBOM generation.

Docker

A multi-stage Dockerfile is provided in docker/ with multiple targets for different use cases. Sample usage is provided in compose.sample.yaml.

The RUNTIME_BASE build arg controls the final image base:

Value	Base image	Use case
web (default)	aspnet	ASP.NET web applications
app	runtime	Console applications
self-contained	runtime-deps	Self-contained deployments

OpenAPI Linting

OpenAPI documents generated at build time are validated using Spectral. Configure rules in .spectral.yaml at the repository root.

Recommendations

Keep in mind that until the dotnet toolset handles generating new projects correctly, you will need to edit new *proj files and remove Version attributes from PackageReference entries. For more details consult Central Package Management.

Provided props files allow compiled models with EF Core 9+, to use them install Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tasks on all projects containing DbContext classes. (Not yet suited for production use, consult Entity Framework Core MSBuild integration).