Azure-devops-docs: Too many libraries is confusing

[requilium]

It is very confusing that there are so many libraries and that none of them seemingly apply to web apps that don't run interactively. What is the one API package for interacting with the VSTS REST API? The API itself is equally insane but this lack of guidance doesn't help.

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• ID: 413163f0-28c3-a2a7-d626-fcb81bcb2257
• Version Independent ID: 57c127da-2b1e-d29e-9abb-a3c258762ccf
• Content: .NET Client Libraries for VSTS (and TFS)
• Content Source: docs/integrate/concepts/dotnet-client-libraries.md
• Product: devops
• GitHub Login: @elbatk
• Microsoft Alias: elbatk

[phatcher]

For example, how do I use the libraries when I have a PAT token

[phatcher]

I've contributed a new sample vsts-auth-samples to address this.

[elbatk]

Hi @rifuller and @phatcher , what docs change would you guys like to see come of this? It looks like that sample you've contributed is excellent.

[requilium]

I think my confusion was with the fact that there's many options for libraries but it isn't clear which one I needed. In the end, I think I needed to install 3 of the 5? They each had different namespaces but somehow they worked together.

What would be useful is a description of what each of those five libraries provides and when to use it. In my case I was using a service account and a PAT to access the API so none of the docs were applicable. They focused heavily on interactive access.

[elbatk]

Hi people, I'm going to add @willsmythe for awareness here. We do have the new .NET Client Library ref now: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/index?view=azure-devops-dotnet, but I know you're looking for more conceptual guidance/samples in this area.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[chcomley]

Hi @rifuller, I'm just catching up on this issue and am wondering whether the previously shared .NET Client Library ref helped. Do you feel there's still some missing information? Thanks! If I don't hear from you this week, I may close this issue. You can always respond and we can create a new one, if need be. Have a great day.

[requilium]

It would be useful to still have a hierarchy of packages, or at least correlate which packages have which APIs in them. They are listed very briefly (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Client has the "identity" apis) but that could be a lot clearer, perhaps with a diagram or by naming the packages better.

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Client and Microsoft.TeamFoundationServer.Client are practically named the same thing (VSS == TFS == VSTS == ADO) so you can't distinguish what is actually in them.

What makes it more confusing is that Microsoft.TeamFoundationServer.Client has a dependency on Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.Client so the latter is really kind of a base client? All of this should be clear in the naming of the packages.

[chcomley]

Adding @wnjenkin for further guidance. Thanks @rifuller, we'll get the docs updated.

[chcomley]

Hi @rifuller, I'm closing this issue and have spun off a new issue. You can track it here. Thank you!