Properly Setting Up .NET Core Projects

Always check “Sign the assembly” to create a strongly named key file. This makes sure the assembly can.

1. Be deployed to the Global Assembly Cache(GAC).
2. Prevent spoofing(the most important reason).
3. Easier to apply Code Access Security (CAS).

To learn more about signing, read the “Manage assembly and manifest signing” post on the docs.microsoft.com site.

Code Analysis

How sound is the code you wrote? Did you know you can check it right from Visual Studio using Analyze? If you aren’t using this FREE code analysis, then stop now and turn it on in all your projects!

Turning Analyze on will analyze the code during the build process for the project or solution. This is not only important to fix bugs in the code but doing it during the build process while you are coding is a lot cheaper than if it’s found later or even worse when a user reports it. Some of the categories of violations that Analyze checks for our design are globalization, naming, performance, security, usage, maintainability, portability, and reliability.

If you haven’t had this turned on in projects, you might have a lot of violations reported. This might prompt you to go back and turn it off… Don’t!! It’s very important to fix these violations before the next release! It might be painful in the beginning, but in the end, your code will be much better off for it.

If you have a copy of Visual Studio that includes Code Analysis, select “Run on build” (off by default).

Build an Event for creating a NuGet package

In .NET Core, it’s simple to create a NuGet package from your DLL projects. To make it easier for me to test my NuGet packages before I upload them to the site, I use the build event script below to pack and copy them to a local folder.

if $(ConfigurationName) == Release (
    dotnet pack "$(ProjectPath)" --no-build --include-source --include-symbols --output "c:\dotNetTips.com\NuGet"
)

Then go to “Manage NuGet Packages for Solution” and create a package source that points to the folder (like the one above) as shown below.

Summary

This information and much more comes from my book David McCarter’s .NET Coding Standards. The next time you create a new project in the .NET Core, I hope you will use this info to set it up. If you have any comments or questions, please make them below.