Adding a project reference fails from Visual Studio

[adcloeshelle]

Product

Visual Studio

Describe The Bug

I am unable to get the "Add a project reference" post action to work when creating a new project via Visual Studio if the project is outside of the template folder. Using the dotnet cli works as expected, but using Visual Studio fails to add the reference and I see errors in the Visual Studio application log like:

817 ERROR Unable to add project reference, C:\ReferenceDemo\src\ClassLibrary1\ClassLibrary1.csproj not found. AddReferencePostCreationAction -- AddReferenceToProjectFileAsync 2024/03/28 19:28:12.402

Even though that path definitely exists.

To Reproduce

Steps: Use the attached demo project

1. Put the ReferenceDemo folder at the root of the C:/ drive
2. Run dotnet pack in C:/ReferenceDemo/templates
3. Run dotnet new install C:/ReferenceDemo/templates/bin/Release/Templates.1.0.0.nupkg
4. Create a new project with the custom template via the dotnet cli (dotnet new AppTemplate). Note that the created project correctly references ClassLibrary1
5. Create a new project with the custom template via Visual Studio. Note that the created project does not have any project references.
   ReferenceDemo.zip

dotnet Info

output

.NET SDK: Version: 8.0.200 Commit: 438cab6a9d Workload version: 8.0.200-manifests.e575128c

Runtime Environment:
OS Name: Windows
OS Version: 10.0.19045
OS Platform: Windows
RID: win-x64
Base Path: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\8.0.200\

.NET workloads installed:
There are no installed workloads to display.

Host:
Version: 8.0.2
Architecture: x64
Commit: 1381d5ebd2

.NET SDKs installed:
3.1.117 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
3.1.426 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
8.0.200 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]

.NET runtimes installed:
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 3.1.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 3.1.17 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 3.1.32 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 6.0.27 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 7.0.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 3.1.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 3.1.17 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 3.1.32 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 6.0.27 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 7.0.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.NETCore.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 3.1.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 3.1.17 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 3.1.32 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 6.0.27 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 7.0.16 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]
Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 8.0.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App]

Other architectures found:
x86 [C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet]
registered at [HKLM\SOFTWARE\dotnet\Setup\InstalledVersions\x86\InstallLocation]

Environment variables:
Not set

global.json file:
Not found

Learn more:
https://aka.ms/dotnet/info

Download .NET:
https://aka.ms/dotnet/download

Visual Studio Version

17.9.1

Additional context

No response

[david-acm]

I think this is related to dotnet/sdk #40132 and #7833.

I proposed a fix in dotnet/sdk#40132

Short explanation is that the template engine doesn't find files that it didin't create. Long in this discussion here