Core: 2.2.202-SDK not available in Visual Studio 2017

[gthvidsten]

.NET Core 2.2 is not available as a "Target framework" in Visual Studio 2017 (15.9.11) after installing the 2.2.202-SDK (x86/x64).

After installing the 2.2.101-SDK, however, "Target framework" correctly displays ".NET Core 2.2" as an option.

[dasMulli]

The 2.2.2xx train only works with VS 2019 (same as 2.1.6xx only works in VS 2019 and 2.1.5xx in VS 2017).

Did you have a 2.2.1xx installed previously? Some users seem to have upgrade issues with vs - https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/3076

[gthvidsten]

I did not have 2.2.1 installed previously.
What is so special about 2.2.2xx that it won't work in VS 2017?

[dasMulli]

It is based on a new major version of MSBuild - 16.0 - which ships in VS 2019. The SDK selection inside of VS only selects SDKs with a compatible MSBuild version, which is 15.* in VS 2017, regardless of whether or not it would actually work anyway.

[dasMulli]

I do agree that the versioning scheme is confusing regarding to which VS versions work with which SDK version..

Maybe the download pages - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core/2.2 - could be updated to reflect which VS versions they work with?.. Some do read "included in VS 16.0" for example but that doesn't say what you need for which version to be able to target which .NET Core runtime..

cc @KathleenDollard @leecow

[leecow]

Thanks @dasMulli, @rowanmiller and I are looking at ways to make the VS compatibility visible and clear.

[tomkerkhove]

That explains why my Azure DevOps build are failing with VS2017 agent.

[peterhuene]

@dasMulli FYI, @leecow is working on updating the downloads page to call out the compatibility more clearly so that there is less confusion in this area.

[peterhuene]

Oh sorry, had this issue open and it was stale. I didn't see Lee already replied :)

[dasMulli]

Another dup: https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetCore.Docs/issues/11844 - migrating 2.1 to 2.2 page now is somehow busted because it basically says / conveys "Make sure you have VS 2017 15.9.4 or greater and get a 2.2 SDK" pointing to that download page.

[cremor]

@peterhuene @leecow
Please also make sure that the "main" download page https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download clearifies this and offers downloads for both VS2017 and VS2019. Right now you can only download the VS2019 compatible .NET Core from there

[timmyreilly]

This is very silly. It took us two hours to find this issue. Mostly because this isn't the first time this sort of issue has happened:
The clutter that already exists for similar issues:

This was the stackoverflow post that finally helped: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55535131/4175241

[rosdi]

I have Visual Studio 2019 version 16.0.1 and .NET SDK 2.2.203, but still the .NET Core 2.2 is not displayed in Target Framework.

I posted a question here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55643900/visual-studio-2019-does-not-display-net-core-2-2-in-target-framework-dropdown

[ferdeli]

Why VS? I got this issue on my local too, and I am using windows and I do have VS 2017. But what will happen if I use Linux, like Ubuntu? I think the build engine for .NET Core should be self-contained, no need to check what I have installed. Sorry if I misunderstand this, and please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

[rosdi]

Meh.. this is embarassing. I had global.json file in my project root folder that specifies .NET Core 2.1 ... that's why Visual Studio refused to show 2.2 Target Framework.

Deleting this file solves my problem immediately.

[Eevoo]

This was the fix for why I was suddenly unable to load / reload my project. VS 2017 kept throwing error : Project file is incomplete. Expected imports are missing.

I guess that's what I get for running a chocolately update all -y without checking for breaking changes!

[KathleenDollard]

@ferdeli You can read more here: https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/108

This is a problem with tools that carry their own copy of MSBuild or other tools. Tools like VS that have MSBuild 15 can't use SDKs with MSBuild 16 because we don't support forward compatibility. MSBuild is the proxy we use for compatibility of the entire toolset.

[timmyreilly]

If there was some way of clarifying to developers what environment variables need to be set, how we should configure our path, where our SDK should reside, how we should generate .csproj files, which tool we should be using with each version, and how we should manage upgrading/working between dotnet core versions would be sweet. The number of 'variables' to a local build environment configuration are powerful, but are hard to grok.

Update as of approximately 2 weeks later... After lots of patience and practice I've been able to grok the build configuration for dotnet core especially for VS Code. The Omnisharp server is important to understand as is .csproj, where your global.json resides and how you organize your projects. Anyways, just thought I'd add this as a positive. Once you get a hang of it its not too bad.

[bryanfarrell]

@peterhuene @leecow So can you please clarify this MSFT? Are you basically saying going forward that if you want to do ASP.NET Core 2.2+ development and your dev environment has projects in VS 2017 and VS 2019, that you have to choose either VS 2017 or VS 2019? Is it possible to install both SDK versions so that both VS 2017 and VS 2019 can work on the projects correctly?

[KathleenDollard]

You can use both VS 2017 and VS 2019. Just install both versions.

VS 2017 will ignore 2.2.2xx use 2.2.1xx and VS 2019 will use 2.2.2xx.

[wulveagfin]

I always recommend not updating to the latest VS for a year and let everyone else work out the kinks.

I guess that now includes .netcore versions.

[carlossanlop]

@KathleenDollard @leecow is this issue still actionable or can we close it as resolved?

[KathleenDollard]

I think we can close this.

[JayadevSoftura]

Please refer the link:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/visual-studio-sdks?utm_source=getdotnetsdk&utm_medium=referral