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.

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