Getting started

To get started with the Windows Community Toolkit, you can follow these steps:

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Cloning the repository

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Windows.git

The folder will contain a tooling and components folder. The latter contains all the individual Toolkit components.

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Running the sample app

Run the following script to navigate to the cloned folder, install SlnGen and run GenerateAllSolutions.bat.

cd *path of your Toolkit folder*

dotnet tool restore

.\GenerateAllSolution.bat

This will generate and open the CommunityToolkit.AllComponents.sln. In Visual Studio, select the preferred startup project (Uwp (WinUI2), WinAppSDK (WinUI3) or Wasm (Uno).

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Creating a new component

To create a new component run the following script:

cd *path of your Toolkit folder*

dotnet new --install .\tooling\ProjectTemplate\

cd components

dotnet new ctk-component -n MyExperimentNameHere

This will generate a new component folder that contains src, samples and tests folders.

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Editing a component

In an existing component folder, you can run OpenSolution.bat to generate the .sln:

cd *path of your component*

.\OpenSolution.bat

The .sln` will open automatically, and contains the a source project (component code), samples project (samples and documentation) and tests project (for all tests).

You can test your component code by adding it to a sample, and use the different startup projects to test it on UWP, WinAppSDK or Uno.

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FAQ

Errors that might come up when running the .bat files:

Error: Cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system

Make sure you set the execution policy. (More info: https://lazyadmin.nl/powershell/running-scripts-is-disabled-on-this-system/)

Error: Could not find a Visual Studio installation. Please run from a command window that has MSBuild.exe on the PATH or specify the full path to devenv.exe via the -vs command-line argument

Use Developer Command Prompt for VS2022, or add msbuild.exe to your PATH variables to use it in e.g. PowerShell. (More info: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12608705)