CLI - allow second parameter to specify name of project/item template

[jamesmontemagno]

Today you have to pass in the -n argument for the name of the project or template. For Example

dotnet new page -n MyPage -na MyNamespace

You almost always are going to specify -n for item templates, ideally you could just pass in a second parameter which is the next default, in this case -n.

This would pair great with #3008, which would allow for

dotnet new class MyClass

[KathleenDollard]

For context, this is something that came up when James and I were chatting about templates and I asked him to file this issue. I'd like it in the backlog for after we have the new parser and as we are considering how to incorporate more item templates in the CLI (so that we are consistent across item templates)

[egvijayanand]

This is in the backlog for almost 2 years, can this be included in the scope for .NET 8 at least?

[baronfel]

This is a candidate for .NET 8 based on team availability. The plan is as follows:

• add a new optional positional argument for the name
  • will likely need a new custom argument parser to reject any tokens that start with -, as these are options that should be forwarded to the unique per-template option parsing
• hide the existing -n option from help output to prevent confusion, but keep accepting it for compatibility purposes
• raise a CLI syntax error if both the new positional argument and the existing argument are provided
• work with docs to update syntaxes
• CHECK TAB COMPLETION behavior (expected: all options are presented)

[egvijayanand]

This has been in the backlog for quite a long time, can this be included in the scope for .NET 9 at least?

[MiYanni]

@egvijayanand

This has been in the backlog for quite a long time, can this be included in the scope for .NET 9 at least?

I had made a draft PR for the changes, but I'm not confident in them as the situation with CLI parsing for new is quite tricky in the current design. Hopefully, I'll be able to revisit those changes early in the new year.

[egvijayanand]

I had made a draft PR for the changes, but I'm not confident in them as the situation with CLI parsing for new is quite tricky in the current design. Hopefully, I'll be able to revisit those changes early in the new year.

That's great to hear. Hope it makes it to the cut of .NET 9