Visual Studio 2022 Cannot Open Solution Templates After First Load

[pastramionry]

I've been creating a solution type template (.net 8) and I noticed that when the latest version of Visual Studio 2022 (17.13.5) creates the solution from the template the Solution Explorer is empty. I have confirmed this on my personal project as well as using the example found in: template-sample\src\Content\SolutionTemplate. Jetbrains Rider and dotnet new do not have any issues. I have verified this on a mostly fresh install of visual studio community (just the .net libraries and .net core 3.1 support installed to get the example project working) on a new machine, as well as an existing copy of visual studio professional on another machine I use for work.

Exiting Visual Studio and opening the project again is the only workaround I have found that works consistently across Visual Studio installs. Even File -> Close Solution does nothing on a fresh Visual Studio install. Interestingly, on my other machine with Resharper installed the solution loads but cannot be built. Building hangs. But if the solution is cleaned the build works just fine.

In case it is relevant I am installing the template with the following command using just the local folder: dotnet new install \template-sample\src\Content\SolutionTemplate. Screenshots below for additional information. Strangely, the Recent Projects and Solutions are showing the source filename of the solution file as well as the one that is created by the template. Perhaps Visual Studio is loading the source filename solution first?

[sayedihashimi]

Hello this can happen if the solution name generated is the same as sourceName. See the guidance at https://github.com/sayedihashimi/template-sample?tab=readme-ov-file#solution-name-best-practices. If you've followed that guidance and it's still not working, please share the template so I can take a look.

[pastramionry]

Hiya @sayedihashimi - I can't really share my personal template at this time but I'm also experiencing this with this repo's example template found here: https://github.com/sayedihashimi/template-sample/tree/main/src/Content/SolutionTemplate.

For what it's worth, I have followed the guidance for solution naming.

[pastramionry]

I think I may have figured out the missing piece. If I make the following change to this template https://github.com/sayedihashimi/template-sample/blob/main/src/Content/SolutionTemplate/.template.config/template.json the solution resulting from the template loads normally:

  "primaryOutputs": [
    {
      "path": "SayedHa.Web.sln"
    }
  ]

[pastramionry]

@sayedihashimi - I see this note in the readme under https://github.com/sayedihashimi/template-sample?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-create-a-multi-project-solution-template suggesting that the primaryOutputs is no longer necessary.

Note in the initial preview of Visual Studio where this support appeared, we had a bug that required the .sln file to be listed in primaryOutputs.

However, if I remove the primaryOutputs entirely from the sample template the solution does not load just as I experienced in my original post. In my experience on two different machines it must be specified (of the format {sourceName}.sln?) to have Visual Studio load the resulting solution. Perhaps there was a regression introduced in Visual Studio?

[sayedihashimi]

@phenning any idea if this is a regression?