Dotnet Local Tools

This walks you through setting up .NET local tools with dotnet-tools.json so your entire team and CI pipeline use the exact same versions of tools like dotnet-ef, docfx, or reportgenerator. Instead of having everyone install tools globally and hope versions match, you commit the manifest and run dotnet tool restore. The guide covers the JSON structure, common tools like Entity Framework migrations and code coverage generators, and CI integration for GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines. The best practices section pushes hard on pinning exact versions with rollForward false, which is the right call if you care about reproducible builds. It's thorough on the global versus local distinction and why you'd want tools scoped per repository instead of machine wide.

Install to Claude Code

npx -y skills add aaronontheweb/dotnet-skills --skill dotnet-local-tools --agent claude-code