4 Using the development tools
This chapter covers
- Using command-line tools to create an ASP.NET Core project
- Adding code and content to a project
- Building and running an ASP.NET Core project
- Using the hot reload feature
- Installing NuGet packages
- Installing tool packages
- Installing client-side packages
- Using the debugger
In this chapter, I introduce the tools that Microsoft provides for ASP.NET Core development and that are used throughout this book.
Unlike earlier editions of this book, I rely on the command-line tools provided by the .NET SDK and additional tool packages that Microsoft publishes. In part, I have done this to help ensure you get the expected results from the examples but also because the command-line tools provide access to all the features required for ASP.NET Core development, regardless of which editor/IDE you have chosen.
Visual Studio—and, to a lesser extent, Visual Studio Code—offers access to some of the tools through user interfaces, which I describe in this chapter, but Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code don’t support all the features that are required for ASP.NET Core development, so there are times that using the command line is inevitable.