Using LibMan in Visual Studio

This topic discusses how to use LibMan from inside Visual Studio.

Overview of LibMan in Visual Studio

Visual Studio has built-in support for using LibMan in Web Projects, including:

• support for configuring and running LibMan restore operation on build
• menu items for triggering LibMan restore and clean operations
• dialog that helps you search for libraries and add the files to your project
• editing support for the LibMan manifest file (libman.json)

Though LibMan can work from any folder or any project type (via CLI or a CI build script), within Visual Studio, LibMan features are only available Web Projects.

Getting started with LibMan

Open a Web Project in Visual Studio 2017 (v15.8 Preview 3 and above).

! If you're looking to get started with a new Web Project, see the Getting Started - Razor MVC guide.

You can add files to your web project two ways:

1. Use the "Add Client-Side Libraries" dialog
2. Edit the libman.json file in the root of the project

Add Client-Side Libraries

• Choose a folder that you want to add files to (or a parent thereof).
• Right-click the folder and select Add->Client-Side Libraries... The "Add Client-Side Libraries" dialog will open with focus in the Library field. [Insert image here of blank Add Files dialog]
• Type the name of a library you want to fetch (ie. "jquery", "twitter-bootstrap") IntelliSense will provide a list of libraries starting with the name given.
• Select the correct item then press Tab. The library ID will be completed with the "@" symbol followed by the latest version known to that provider. Focus will move to the files selection radio buttons.
• To include all files in the specified library, set the radio button to "Include all library files".
• To specify a smaller set of files from the library, choose the "Select library files" option, which will enable the file selector tree with a smaller set selected by default.
• Use the checkboxes to the left of the files to select the files to download. [Insert image of Add Files dialog with 3 files selected.]
• Specify the location of the new files. Note: It is recommended to keep each library in a separate folder. The default location suggested for the new files will be a folder with the same name as the library under the directed the dialog was launched from. Modify the Specified Location as necessary.
• Press Install. The configuration will be written to libman.json in the project root and the files will be downloaded into the project.

UI Elements

Various elements include:

• UI components
  • Add New Library
  • Manage Client-side Libraries
  • Enable Restore on Build
  • Clean
• Editing the manifest (libman.json)
  • IntelliSense is available
• Actions
  • Install/Uninstall, Restore, Clean
  • Status shown in Background Task Center
  • Output shown in Output window